[V3dot9] Fwd: FFI

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Fri Aug 11 20:41:38 UTC 2006


Hi andreas

May be we should have said that before.
Now this is just that we are **********exhauted************ by squeak.
So I pushed marcus to have a look and he tried because this is a cool  
guy and he saw all that and was
sick because he wants to stop. So now you know the background.

> If you think that this is a blocking criteria for unloading the  
> FFI, you should point that out and we should have a discussion  
> about how to deal with situations like those. Saying that any such  
> occurrence means the package cannot possibly be removed is  
> certainly not a good answer.

see background above. Sorry I can try to do something if you gave me  
the stuff done and some time
since I do not have time the next three or four days.


> Nowadays, and assuming some of the upcoming VM changes, all of  
> these can be solved in pretty decent ways:
>
> a) With the latest VM changes, these classes can be stored directly  
> in the FFI plugin and don't need to be splObjs. This is on my TODO  
> list as soon as we have VMs that support it.
>
> b) The Compiler could have class variable where an FFI extension  
> can be stored (which means that another implementation of the FFI  
> could hook into the compiler as well)
>
> c) The method #discardFFI should be removed alltogether.
>
> Of the above a) and b) may go a bit too far for 3.9 but at least  
> I'd like to have a discussion about available options. Personally,  
> I don't think that these references are really *that* problematic,  
> but I'm open for contrary arguments.

I do not know so I followed marcus when he has conservative arguments :)


>
>> What happens when we load FFI? Does is call the specialObject  
>> registration?
>
> While I don't see how this question relates to unloading the FFI,  
> the obvious answer is: Yes, it does. If it doesn't, you file a bug  
> report and I'll fix it.

Ok

We got a really good discussion with lukas on how to use pragmas so  
that we could have FFI function
using pragmas in a nice way and we could get the compiler nicely  
extended in a modular way.
I would love to see you talking with him about that and that we could  
integrate these ideas in 3.10.
Lukas?


>> If we then clean up the image further, do we just delete the  
>> discardFFI method and loose the ability to unload FFI?
>
> Again, I fail to see the relevance of that question for the problem  
> at hand, but again the obvious answer is: No you don't. If you do,  
> you file a bug report and I'll fix it.

Ok

>> Will we "clean" the compiler and the specialObject
>> array at some point by accident?
>
> By accident? How exactly do you imagine that to happen? The only  
> way I could see that happen is by someone making pretty explicit  
> and deliberate changes. I have never seen code "just vanishing".

The point of marcus was that if something is not explicit then  
someone could change the code and we would lose some information
and break the fact that FFI could be used or something like that.

>> Where are those dependencies documented?
>
> Where would you like them to be documented? If that is a criteria  
> for removal, just let me know and I'll fix it.
>
>> I can do it now in the hackish way (leaving the non-tracable bits  
>> of FFI), but I wasted another hour(!) for this!!!
>>
>> I want to stop. I don't care anymore. I want to finish.
>
> And why in the lord's name did you waste an hour instead of  
> spending five minutes writing me an email saying "hey, I've got  
> this and that problem, got any ideas"?

Indeed this is a good question. May be the communication between us  
is broken and we need to drink more
beers together. I imagine that this is true squeakers need to meet  
more often.

> It strikes me as the obvious thing to do, in particular because  
> your complaining to Stef of all people won't change a single thing.  
> If you want a resolution you should talk to the maintainer.

Yes but marcus was telling me that because he is ****TIRED/ 
EXHAUSTED**** and I was still pushing.
>
> That would be me.

Andreas here is what I suggest:
	give me all the information plus code and I will do it

Marcus do you have the script to create the new source?
I can take some time this week to solve that problem as soon as  
andreas gives to me the info I need.
And we release 3.9

>
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
>




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