[Vm-dev] Request: VM support for opening browser

[phil at highoctane.be]

What prevents someone to build his own image with his own plugins?
(optionally making these available).

For the specific browser feature, I'd be perfectly happy with OSProcess.

Phil

2012/7/20 Camillo Bruni <camillobruni at gmail.com>

>
>
> On 2012-07-20, at 15:40, Torsten Bergmann wrote:
>
> >
> > Esteban wrote
> >>> Well... I also disagree with the argument of safeness.
> >>
> >> Exactly, Pharo is inherently "unsafe" so to speak, you can
> >> - remove arbitrary methods
> >> - add arbitrary new classes
> >> - change methods at will
> >> - swap any two objects...
> >
> > We dont talk about the safeness of the image here!
> > Its always easy to compromise an image with #become: and
> > friends. This is clear as spring water.
> >
> > We talk about how "unsafe" is it to allow Smalltalk
> > to harm the external platform.
> >
> > There are two point of views:
> >
> > 1. One can include FFI or other mechanisms in image/VM by
> >    default and allow external calling right from Smalltalk.
> >    I think this is the way we go for Pharo to align
> >    with .NET, Java and friends.
> >
> > 2. Others my see the virtual machine as a clear separator
> >    between the image and the platform.
> >    The VM defines the protocol/contract between the image
> >    and the underlying platform to make sure they work
> >    together seamlessly
> >
> > Both are valid POV's. The first option can be seen as more "unsafe"
> > since you can not control (from VM side) what gets called in
> > the outside platform.
> >
> > With option 2 the virtual machine has more control for instance
> > when running in a sandbox (browser, the cloud, ...)
> >
> > Take netstyle.ch for example: they modified the virtual machine
> > to be more restrictive (only run on specific sockets, writing
> > only to relative directories) so they could run images in
> > sandboxed environment on "http://seasidehosting.st".
>
> Well you can always run it in a virtualization environment
> and then you have completely shielded of the image
>
> > So will we discuss "unsafety" or "will we support URL opening
> > directly from the VM" ...
>
> most probably we will add it, but not as a plugin
>
> > If it is too much work then forget my request. One can circumvent
> > it using ConfigurationOfExternalBrowser. But I thought it may
> > be helpfull to more controlled/restricted (Option 2) environments
> > too.
> >
> > Bye
> > T.
> >
> >
>
>
>
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