[Vm-dev] VMMaker[Tool] considered harmful

Juan Vuletich juan at jvuletich.org
Mon Mar 29 13:04:05 UTC 2010


Andreas Raab wrote:
>
> Folks -
>
> This is probably not the best time to raise this issue but I've been 
> increasingly unhappy about VMMaker over time (ask Eliot :-) From my 
> perspective VMMaker is now a tool that gets more in your way than it 
> helps. I'd like to make to make it *much* simpler. Here's what I think 
> VMMaker ought to do:
>
> * Translate a set of classes into C code in a specific directory.
>
> Period. No fuzzing with second-guessing of absence or presence of 
> platform or support directories, no upfront-decisions about what 
> plugins to build internally vs. externally, no guessing about the 
> layout of the files in a particular port, no copying files between 
> unrelated directories.

I agree.

But I'd like something else. Currently VMMaker is both for building the 
whole VM and plugins. I almost never build the whole VM. And I build 
small plugins all the time. I believe that the subset for building 
plugins should be a separate package.

I don't mind loading the whole interpreter. But, for example, Cuis does 
not include Balloon. So loading the Balloon plugin is not trivial, and 
really not needed if I'm just building, for example, a LinearAlgebra plugin.

What I do is to strip out unneeded plugins in order to build a VMMaker 
package that can cleanly load and run in Cuis.

Not a big deal, but something that could be addressed.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich


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