Debugging Exupery

[bryce at kampjes.demon.co.uk]

Jason Johnson writes:
 > This sounds like some pre/post conditions might help, i.e. a returned
 > to context must always be valid, etc.  Just a thought, given that this
 > bug has been out there so long and turned out to be kind of a
 > "contract violation".
 > 
 > But interesting stuff.  Does the compiler run longer then an hour now?

The problem with pre/post conditions is you'd need to add them
to every return and most VMs execute millions of sends every
second. Normally, I'll just add a test or two that covers the
cases required. I have tried adding debugging checks but it's
very easy to make the VM cripplingly slow.

It runs about an hour still, I haven't fixed the bug yet. Just
isolated one. Though it can last for longer. After about 10
minutes it's finished compiling itself so to compile anything
more requires use so the profiler sees some new code.

Bryce