[DGD]EPP 2.0

[Felix A. Croes]

"Jason Cone" <jcone at uscdev.com> wrote:

> From: "Felix A. Croes" <felix at dworkin.nl>
>
>[...]
> > This comes up every now and then.  I am not sure if it is simply too
> > difficult to add kfuns -- perhaps I should write a doc? -- or if there
> > really is a good reason for linking to C code in another way.
>
> Well, no matter the end result of this discussion, adding a fairly detailed
> document on how to extend the driver is a _great_ idea.

Okay.  Things have gotten more regular recently, with the addition
of macros for common stack manipulations, which will make writing
new kfuns easier.


>[...]
> I'm not an advocate of creating a pure "inside-to-outside" bridge (a la, a
> single kfun to call any external function -- there are too many OS-specific
> issues to deal with there), but rather the ability to extend DGD at
> run-time.

I can see why you want this, but I don't like it; such an addition
would make DGD a lot less portable.  I especially fear for a lot of
Unix platforms which at present I can treat as identical.  To a lesser
extend, I also dislike the idea of kfun modules being developed that
work on one platform only.

I propose a compromise:

I will add functionality to the code of DGD which allows for the
addition of kfuns, and perhaps other things, at runtime.  I will only
implement the interface, and leave out the platform dependent code.
I document this interface in the kfun doc mentioned above.  Others can
now write platform-dependent module load functionality which will have
to be compiled together with the driver; but once compiled, arbitrary
modules can be added to DGD at runtime without recompiling DGD.

Comments?

Regards,
Dworkin

List config page:  http://list.imaginary.com/mailman/listinfo/dgd