[squeak-dev] All-in-one VM for 4.4?

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Thu Mar 7 14:09:12 UTC 2013


On 2013-03-07, at 05:05, "David T. Lewis" <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 06:22:02PM -0800, tim Rowledge wrote:
>> 
>> On 06-03-2013, at 5:32 PM, "David T. Lewis" <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
>>> 	^#(
>>> 		#(	"internal plugins"
> ...
> 
>>> 		)
>>> 		#(	"external plugins"
> ...
> 
>>> 		)
>> 
>> Crikey. I don't recognise half of those.
>> 
>> It does raise another interesting question; why internal? Why external? Given the option, what makes a good reason for either option?
>> 
>> On RISC OS I simply make everything external because it makes my build simpler and has no cost in space or performance. What about other platforms?
> 
> It probably makes no real difference at all, aside from packaging. Internal
> plugins reduce clutter in the installation directory. External plugins can
> be easily excluded from the runtime environment. For example, OSProcessPlugin
> should be external so that it can be deleted if security is a concern.
> 
> IIRC, BitBltSimulation and BalloonEnginePlugin need to be built internal, but
> aside from that all plugins can be either internal or external at the discretion
> of the VM builder.
> 
> Dave


Some plugins should be built externally because they are dynamically linked with system libraries that may or may not exist on any given system. If they were built internally, then the VM itself would have these dependencies, making its use less universal.

- Bert -




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