[Vm-dev] Re: latest vmmaker wont run with pharo 1.1.1 (dev)

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Tue Nov 9 00:36:53 UTC 2010


On Mon, Nov 08, 2010 at 10:30:21AM +0100, Henrik Johansen wrote:
>  
> Den 08.11.2010 04:28, skrev Andreas Raab:
> >
> > On 11/7/2010 1:38 PM, Henrik Sperre Johansen wrote:
> >>> IMO the obvious solution is to fix the problem where it
> >>> orginated, in the Pharo image.
> >> Reverting would reintroduce getting invalid results from the plugin,
> >> without any workaround.
> >> Not really an option.
> >
> > You could just fix the problem, you know :-) Seriously, if there's a
> > bug in the plugin, perhaps we should fix that problem? After which
> > reverting the method is obviously the correct solution for this problem.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >   - Andreas
> 
> Oh absolutely, you just have to add the disclaimer: "Only run this image
> with a VM built from VMMaker with an image version newer than XY (Pharo)
> or ZI (Squeak). :-) (Which is what I meant with reproducibility issues, btw)

Actually there is no problem with respect to image/VM compatibility
at runtime. As long as the primitive has been built into the VM, it is
going to work fine with any image that calls the named primitive.

But I think that Andreas is asking another question: What was the original
motivation for renaming the method? And based on that, is there something
that needs to be fixed in the primitive itself so that this will not be
an issue? I don't really know the background on this myself, but it looks
like there was a problem related to passing a WideString as a parameter
to ByteString>>findSubstring:in:startingAt:matchTable:, and that the
workaround in Pharo was to put an #isWideString check into
#findSubstring:in:startingAt:matchTable: (which of course completely
trashed the translation of #findSubstring:in:startingAt:matchTable:
when translating to C).

The #isWideString check has a bad smell and suggests that there might
be something that needs fixing in the primitive, after which the method
could be reverted and everyone would be happy.

Unfortunately I am a modestly educated English speaker, so I am largely
guessing as to the background on this issue ;)

Dave



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