[Vm-dev] Add argvec and envec to sqVirtualMachine.[ch]? (was: FT2Plugin stops working with latest version)

[David T. Lewis]

On Tue, Oct 04, 2011 at 03:48:18PM +0200, Igor Stasenko wrote:
> 
> On 4 October 2011 14:17, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think there was an issue on some of the Mac platforms that required
> > a compiler flag to force the compiler to make global variables visible
> > (for the environment vector, etc). Is that the problem here? I do not
> > have a Mac, but I'll try to help figure this out if I can.
> >
> 
> If i remember correctly, a Cocoa VM using different entry point for
> main() function.
> or have some other differencies, so you cannot just pass argc, argv
> around, but you have to prepare them.
> 
> If you remember, i proposed to make an API for exposing these
> variables, so then not only OSProcess could access them
> but any other plugin, without need of hackish linking flags, which
> lead to confusion and too compiler/linker specific.

Yes, I do remember this suggestion (although I can't find a pointer
to it right now). I was mildly (not strongly) against it, but what do
others think?

My opinion was based on:

1) Setting a compiler flag to instruct it to make globals visible does
not seem hackish to me. After all, most of the compilers we use work
like that anyway, and it does not seem to be hurting them.

2) In order for the definitions to be visible for both a standard
interpreter VM and a Cog/stack VM, the definitions would need to be
added to the existing VM_PROXY_MINOR 9 definitions. That amounts
to changing the defined interface without incrementing the version
number, which definitely does seem hackish to me (though probably
harmless).

3) The argument vector and environment vector are Unix constructs.
Adding platform specific things to the interpreter interface should
be avoided. Again, this is harmless since all of the major platforms
mimic Unix in this respect, but still ... all the world is not unix ;)

In any case, I do not have a strong opinion one way or the other,
I'm just explaining my perspective on it.

Other opinions? Esteban, you are probably most directly affected
by this, do you have a preference?

Dave