Somebody said:
> >         I'd like to see WeakArrays and swAPIs moved to the base image, mostly becous
> e they need VM recompilation. I think that sqAPIs portability should be checked befor 
> moving it into the base image.
I'm inclined to agree; weak pointer stuff would help a lot with releasing
external resources (like files and eventually windows etc) and external api
stuff would provide the door to the factoring of the VM that Travis
suggested.
The weak pointers probalby need to go into the base VM since it involves
detailed gc changes. I can't easily see them being a simple add-in.
Similarly, the external api stuff would probably need to be there in order
to load the external api stuff if it wasn't already there...

If the base vm included the basic execution machinery, external apis and
(probalby) bitblt, then almost everything else can be loaded on need. As a
workng example, the Acorn version of eliot's brouhaha that we did _years
and years_ ago had no file prims, no serial prims, nothing like that and
did it all via system calls. Even on an 8MHz ARM2 it could handle 9600baud
serial ports without seriously impairing typing speed etc. so the external
calls can't have been too costly.

tim
 

-- 
Useful random insult:- Has an inferiority complex, but not a very good one.
Tim Rowledge:  rowledge at interval.com (w)  +1 (650) 842-6110 (w)
 tim at sumeru.stanford.edu (h)  <http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim>