On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 04:49:12PM -0700, Tim Rowledge wrote:
In message 20050612120808.A7735@conch.msen.com "David T. Lewis" lewis@mail.msen.com wrote:
Note: The right thing to do is to have a global sessionID that can be used by any plugin that requires it, which currently is FilePlugin, SocketPlugin, and OSProcessPlugin. It probably is also a good idea to make the value available through a primitive, similar to the way we obtain system time or timezone offset. That would make sessionID available to the image for purposes of e.g. identifying unique Squeak sessions on the internet.
I agree strongly. I even have your old code for this sitting around. The issue is that a plugin expecting the vm to supply session id would have to run with a vm able to so do. It seems some people mix releases and might get upset by this. Personally I say to hell with them. Others might disagree.
In principle, this is very important (maintaining backward compatibility such that an external plugin will work with a VM that might not be at the same version level). In practice, it is unlikely that a Squeak user would mix a newer FilePlugin with and older VM, since most folks obtain and install both at the same time.
A conservative approach would be to introduce the changes into the VM, then update the FilePlugin, SocketPlugin, and OSPP about 12 months later. But really I don't think it's necessary to be so conservative in this case. It's not as though we're burning the disk packs.
Dave