[MUD-Dev] Re: Bruce Sterling on Virtual Community goals

[Adam J. Thornton]

On Thu, Oct 22, 1998 at 09:01:31AM -0700, Bruce Mitchener, Jr. wrote:
> Currently, there are 2 problems with that.  1)  Must recompile the driver,
> since this modifies the opcode set.  I'd like to see that change and start
> dynamically loading code in. 2) Can't currently call back into the
> interpreter.  I expect to see this get fixed also.

Look at the Linux kernel module interface and kerneld.  Do something like
that.  Then all you have to do is make sure that each capability gets its
own unique identifier so the kernel knows which module to try to load.
There's also a neat feature that if a certain extension is not used within
some timeout, it is unloaded, which reduces the working set size.  Not
terribly useful on modern huge machines, but it made a big difference on
the 12M P75 I was running as a router and 10Mbps/100Mbps bridge (now the
beast has an extra 4M of memory and is much happier).

Adam
--
adam at princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman