On 25-May-09, at 4:04 PM, stepken wrote: > https, md5, DES, AES .... i really wonder, why you can't decide to > plugin libcrypt ....? > > In C programming language we have all, we can imagine. So why reinvent > the wheel by rewriting complex code in smalltalk?
The problem with providing plugins is that it's very non-portable. Issues: (a) The number of people who write and maintain plugins for Squeak is likely countable on a pair of hands. (b) For Sophie we had to statically link FreeType into Sophie because Apple over different operating systems versions provided a multiple selection of broken freetype versions. Witness the hassles people have installing a product on linux because of incompatible libraries. (c) Does that plugin work with os-x 10.2 on a powerpc machine? Gee why not? Who knows? Where is that powerPC 10.2 test machine? Obviously if the code is all in smalltalk the above is not a problem, and you can fix it, If all in FFI then less of a problem and maybe you still can fix it. If a plugin, then I doubt you'll fix it. Certainly we don't expect to take *everything* and rewrite in Smalltalk, witness the freetype and curl work as an example, and all of this doesn't touch on license insanity and wondering if that library is *safe* to use. -- = = = ======================================================================== John M. McIntosh <[email protected]> Twitter: squeaker68882 Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com = = = ======================================================================== _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
