Hi,
Maybe i'm not right - it is always easier to manage a small group of contributors which never asking anyone's opinion how to do things, and in result they deliver things like Morphic and Etoys (sorry :) which nearly impossible to decouple from the rest of system, because obviously no one thought about things like running squeak w/o Morphic before.
I think it show that they can´t doit in other way, and it is good to work the best way for the "author/worker". The problem is what is missing that make people think they can´t decouple (anyPartOfTheSystem) by themselves. imho it reveals a failure in education efforts -download aFish instead of try fishing- and is a problem of this times (too easy/fast to fileIn and doIt).
A compiler framework is described as something we want, but we need more than two instances/compilers to start to think we have a framework (it can´t be invented). A way to make a framework emerge is to have more than one person/group working on alternatives and provide a set of open topDown requirements in form of tutorials/exemplars of use of Smalltalk compilation solutions. A swiki page with guides on how people want to use aNewSmalltalkCompiler may be used to guide people interested in write a concrete support.
best, Ale.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Igor Stasenko" siguctua@gmail.com To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 6:08 PM Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] Re: Making a better Compiler for all
2008/9/1 Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda@gmail.com:
Please have a look at my closure compiler. This puts bytecode generation into a separate class (a subclass of Encoder).
This is one of the things we really need to be decoupled.
You can find the code on the download page of my blog. Marcus Denker and I are in agreement that we will merge my Closure compiler into Markus' NewCompiler "some time soon". The thought of a committee fills me with horror :) I don't think we need anything so baroque :)
Well, i only hope, that you will not need to say to people words like: 'this stuff not working because you need my compiler to use it'. Or words like: 'this stuff works only in mine fork'. Maybe it is not hurts someone losing a potential contributors and splitting community over and over. But i think having something in common, like compiler is for best of all. Maybe i'm not right - it is always easier to manage a small group of contributors which never asking anyone's opinion how to do things, and in result they deliver things like Morphic and Etoys (sorry :) which nearly impossible to decouple from the rest of system, because obviously no one thought about things like running squeak w/o Morphic before.
And me, as a Squeak board member, as well as others were elected on the wave of making Squeak having better modularity. The lack of modularity in Squeak is one of the bigger issues in system, which prevents it to be easily managed and adopted for different solutions. One of the critical steps towards modularity is to make better, modular compiler. Of course, we can wait a little and start using NewSpeak, so there is nothing to do or worry about, isnt? ;)
Best Eliot
-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.