Glorp has a similar idea called Dialect which it uses to level the platforms.
On Feb 1, 2007, at 10:55 PM, Alan Lovejoy wrote:
Bruce Badger wrote: "More recently I have put together the Sport library with the aim of being able to write most code to a consistent portable >interface (that of Sport) and then have different implementations of Sport for each dialect. Sport is a kludge, though. ....
Another option for inter-Smalltal portability is the Passport library that I developed in order to make Chronos work on VisualWorks, Squeak and Dolphin. It provides the class ResourcePath, which is similar in many ways to VW's Filename class.
For more information, see my recent blog post on Passport: http://chronos-st.blogspot.com/2007/01/filenames-and-inter- smalltalk.html
So, we (the smalltalk community) have at least half a dozen diferent solutions to the Smalltalk portability problem. Each solution was built because the author saw the same need and did not see what they felt was a suitable existing solution.
I would very much like to see the need for the OpenSkills portability solution, Sport, to go away. But when we move from Sport I would want it to be a final move. I don't want to spend my coding time moving all my code to the latest and greatest portability stop-gap. Sport is fine for now so I don't need another intermediate solution. What I need is a widely agreed standard that will let me throw Sport away.
OK, so how do we get an agreed standard. We all know the formal process is long and painful, so what can we do instead? I know, why don't you all just use Sport? ... ah, right. Well, lets all get together when we can to work out how to handle the basics like files and sockets. Let's have a meeting every year at Smalltalk Solutions and who knows, in 5 or ten years we may have something agreed. We can work out a cool process for handling contention and for managing the evolution of the standard.
... but wait a minute, the standards bodies *already* provide a framework for people to develop standards - do we want to re-invent that wheel too?
The sooner we get the ANSI committee rolling again or start a new committee under another standards body, the better. If it takes 5 years so be it, but we need to start sometime if we *ever* want to see easily portable Smalltalk code.
BTW, and FWIW I think that the standardisation process should be an on-going and not a goal-centric effort. I think that as things are agreed they should be released into the published standard with the standard being released every two years or so. In this way we can fairly quickly get standards in place for the things which are easy while not being shy about discussing the things which are not so easy.
Best regards, Bruce
<Bruce Badger> ...some good points snipped... BTW, and FWIW I think that the standardisation process should be an on-going and not a goal-centric effort. I think that as things are agreed they should be released into the published standard with the standard being released every two years or so. In this way we can fairly quickly get standards in place for the things which are easy while not being shy about discussing the things which are not so easy. </Bruce Badger>
Interesting idea. How easy would it be to actually follow an "as each element is ready" release strategy under the auspices of ANSI?
--Alan
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