OpenEuphoria

Re: Why some people have not upgraded

• Posted by Pete Lomax <petelomax at blueyonder.co.uk> Jan 04, 2006
• 523 views

>Robert Craig wrote:
>
>> I haven't looked into shrouding of includes for 2.5 (and later),
>> except to note that while it's not "rocket science", it would
>> be complicated. If you have any ideas, I'd be interested, but
I had a think. Suppose win32lib.ew is:

<some code>
	include dll.e
	<...>

Then (full source shown):

include win32lib.ew

and

include dll.e
	include win32lib.ew

would require two different .il images for win32lib.ew, one with dll.e
embedded and one which references the previously loaded instance.

If the rule was made that include xxx.il could only occur as the very 
first line of a program, then it would not require any relocation or 
fixups of any references to external globals, just insertions of the 
new globals into the hash lookup table(s), which would make things far
easier. 

My current thought is that an include xxx.il statement should 
(obviously) load the .il if it exists, if not find the corresponding 
source file and compile it normally, and at eof could dump the (whole)
symbol (and hash) table to file. The programmer would just need to 
(manually) delete the .il file to force it to be rebuilt, and/or Edita
could do so automatically.

The missing file extension might be a problem, maybe:
include win32lib[.il from [win32lib]].ew [as win32]

If a program uses a number of standard libs, it could just use a 
simple stub file containing all the required include statements. When 
using a library like win32lib, it is usually/often about 90% of the 
source anyway, for more complex programs, the programmer can manually 
add selected (completed) components (barring forward reference issues)
to this file. In practice, aiming for anything over 80% is a waste of 
time anyway, since that is what binding is for.

I shall sleep on this a few days, see if any further thoughts arise.

>> since I'm selling the Binder, I can't reveal the RDS .il format,
>> and therefore can't work openly with anyone else on this.
>
>> The 2.4 Binder has several bugs. Shrouding of includes in 2.4 was
>> possible, but few tried it, and those that did usually realized
>> it didn't work the way they really wanted. For instance,
>> it was *not* a transparent replacement for a clear-source include file.
>
Vincent wrote:
>OK, if people want this ability then I have nothing against it, but still fail
>to see the need for this in most cases.
To reduce the load time in 2.5, perhaps?
>
>Why would people want to "hide" parts of their code, while offering the rest?
Edita has two such (optional) components, Print Preview and Window
Painter. Not that there is any way yet to pay for them even if you
wanted to, but I am keeping that option open. Shipping a single
win32lib.il rather than the complete source also strikes me as a
reasonable idea.

> If they did, they could just make DLLs and SOs 
The bulk of win32lib is constants, which, cmiiw, do not go well in dll

Regards,
Pete