[Vm-dev] About SQFile's fileSize field

[Levente Uzonyi]

I went ahead a bit, removed the field, updated the sources, and compiled a 
VM with the changes. It works fine on linux. I've updated the windows and 
mac files too, but I can't test those.
There are some remaining references to the removed field in the RiscOS 
platforms file, but I don't really know what to do with that. The code 
seems to be using platform specific calls to implement the plugin, which 
is unusual, but may be more efficient than the generic C implementation.

Anyway, the code is on github[1]. I'll create a pull request once someone 
says something about the idea.

Levente

[1] https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/compare/Cog...smalltalking:Cog

On Tue, 10 Oct 2017, Levente Uzonyi wrote:

>
> Hi All,
>
> The SQFile struct[1] has a field named fileSize, which is used to cache[2] 
> the size of the file when such property makes sense.
> This caching behavior seems unnecessary, and it causes synchronization 
> problems between multiple SQFile structures of a single file. The latter 
> could be worked around by updating the cached value more often, but I was 
> wondering why is the value cached at all. Does anyone know?
>
> Levente
>
> [1] 
> https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/blob/Cog/platforms/Cross/plugins/FilePlugin/FilePlugin.h
> [2] 
> https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/blob/Cog/platforms/Cross/plugins/FilePlugin/sqFilePluginBasicPrims.c
>