On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 10:33:38AM -0600, Aaron J Reichow wrote:
On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Lex Spoon wrote:
- Make sure you have whatever OS-specific extensions are available.
If you're talking about "scripting", quite frequently you want to access OS-specific resources. For Mac guys, there is AppleScript stuff in the main image. For Unix and maybe Microsoft guys, there is OSProcess.
Another concern of mine. I'd be nice to have some consistency between platforms for how this OS specific stuff is done. Perhaps another layer on-top of OS process, or just the implementation of all of the placeholder classes in OS Process. (OS Process only works with Unix/Linux)
Aaron
Umm, perhaps this would be a good time for me to ask for a bit of assistance. In writing the OSProcess classes, I included placeholder concrete classes for Win, Mac, etc. Initially I had no intention of implementing any of the Win/Mac stuff, but I would like to make this cross platform in keeping with the rest of Squeak. And I would be very unhappy if we needed to put another layer on top of OSProcess; I would prefer to fix the design of OSProcess if I did not get it right.
Do any of you have any feedback on OSProcess after loading it into your Windows or Mac based Squeak images? Is anyone considering implementing the Windows, Mac, OS/2, or Acorn parts? From a design point of view, is the simple "Unix process" model adequate for representing these concepts on other operating systems, or would it be better (for example) to represent threads of execution as distinct from the process data context? I did not want to add the complexity of modeling OS threads unless it is really needed, but some operating systems put a lot of emphasis on thread scheduling, so perhaps it is better to add this as a basic part of the modeling of an "OS Process".
I do not own a Mac, and I am rather short on time, knowledge, and motivation when it comes to Windows. Therefore, any advice would be welcome. Non-Unix implementations would be even more welcome.
Thanks, Dave
p.s. Now that FFI is available, it should be much easier for someone to implement the Mac or Windows versions of the UnixOSProcessPlugin module. Actually, the separate plugin could be completely eliminated by using FFI.