On Feb 16, 2004, at 4:42 PM, Avi Bryant wrote:
> Sure, but given both options I don't understand the bias towards using 
> a plugin that depends on an external library.  Except in cases where 
> it's impossible to get adequate performance in pure Squeak, shouldn't 
> the bias go the other way?
My general rule is to go for the way that involves least work. If the 
case were that using a C pcre library (and by the way, that 32kb plugin 
size does include the size of the compiled pcre library) and some 
methods to call it  was available and a 'pure Smalltalk' package was 
not - I'd go for the former. Somebodyelse did the work, maintains it 
etc- slamdunk.

In this particular case there _is_ a purely Smalltalk solution that 
sounds quite plausible. What size does it add to the image? It's 
probably smaller, but maybe not. What sort of memory usage does it 
cause in running?

An interesting option might be to see if the two can work together so 
that the plugin can be optional.

It's not something I'm going to make a call on but I do need to know an 
answer fairly soon so I can drop the plugin from the VMMaker package if 
needed before the 3.7 release.

tim