grr... darn <reply> button... sent it to Edgar instead of the whole list..
blurk.
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: Re: Blackbox: which features *you* want?
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 03:33:27 -0600
From: Aaron J. Seigo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Edgar Bonet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
hi...
lurk = false;
> First option: put everything in the same binary. For this option I ask
> myself the following question: what is the problem with having a big
> binary? I know it sounds provocative, but think of the following: As
i don't think the issue (for those that have an issue) is with the idea of a
slightly bigger binary but rather with how where does the integration end? a
slit, a task bar, a pager, hotkeys ... then what? load monitors? desktop
icons? menus on the slit? i think the issue is that of the slippery slope
of feature inclusion. i could be wrong. =)
> Another approach would be to have the extras compiled as dynamically
> loadable modules, just the way PAM or Apache work. This way an unused
> feature would not even eat virtual memory. This sounds appealing to me,
> but it is just a very wild suggestion. I have no idea of how
> (im)practical it would be to implement loadable modules. Any comments
> on this?
if you know what parts of the BB API you want to expose, this shouldn't be a
problem at all and implementing loadable modules is trivial. once loaded,
there is no real extra overhead for the modules (except what they use
themselves, obviously =) ... once you define what functionality wihtin BB the
modules should have access to (which i don't think would be difficult to
define, but is necessary to maintain a stable interface for the modules) then
you can implement such a loading feature in under 100 lines of code.
> As for the last option, namely to keep things in separate applications,
> I think packaging everything in a single rpm/deb/tgz is a good idea. I
> know this is still a waste of ressources for those who don't want them,
> but I really think it's a very minor one. We are talking of less than
> a MB of *disk* space, which is a loooot chaper than RAM.
if you go the loadable mod route, you could package bb itself in one tarball
and all the plugins in another. make everyone happy =)
--
Aaron Seigo
-------------------------------------------------------
--
Aaron Seigo
