Mars, stuck on callbacks (again)... need opinions

Hi guys,
I'm doing some "advance callbacks" for Mars, and I'm having several problems with table renderers (they are called A LOT of times and needs to be efficient). The ObjectiveCBridge is not as efficient as that calls needs to be executed, and well... I was planing to spend some time on this, trying to see how can I improve the callback velocity. And then a question came to my mind:

do I spend time improving current ObjectiveCBridge implementation... or I better use Alien and migrate everything to it?

some context:

1) it was always planned to "sonner or latter" migrate the ObjectiveCBridge stuff to alien (there is another .
2) Alien is not working -yet- for iPhone. It is planned (bah... it is "thought") to run Alien in iPhoneVM too.
3) Alien callback implementation is a lot cleaner than the current ObjectiveCBridge implementation (which relies on both sides semaphores, when alien callbacks relies on "image ownership")

So... it will delay a little a release of Mars? sure it will... but in the long way it will be better.

I would like to hear your opinions,

cheers,
Esteban

On 23 December 2010 20:35, Esteban Lorenzano <[hidden email]> wrote:
i wanted to offer a NativeBoost, but it is not ready for use under MacOS yet :)

About iPhoneVM - definitely, you will need to use something else than NB.

And Eliot also having somethings to offer :)

> I would like to hear your opinions,
>
> cheers,
> Esteban



--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

Esteban,

FW(very little)IW, my first reaction as I started reading was "has he thought about native boost or alien?"  Callbacks have been in a possible-but-not-supported state for a long time.  I believe Eliot recently mentioned callbacks in FFI, so it seems to be an idea that is solidifying.

At present, I have .so that exports functions in lieu of callbacks.  I have to recompile the library to change anything :(  but it's number crunching so I get C speed for my trouble :)   The functions are used small numbers of times, so Smalltalk speed and flexibility would be preferable for all of my uses to date  ~:0

Good hunting!

Bill

Hi Bill,
Yes, Alien already support callbacks... maybe you can try it instead recompiling every time :)

Cheers,
Esteban

El 23/12/2010, a las 6:22p.m., Schwab,Wilhelm K escribió:

I'm still watching.  Alien didn't really exist on Linux (so it was not an option) when I last looked, and native boost was starting to look pretty attractive.  FFI gets some points because I know more about (at least using) it than the others.  The recompiling is easy enough for now, and it ain't broke.



________________________________________
From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Esteban Lorenzano [[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2010 4:28 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Mars,      stuck on callbacks (again)... need opinions

Hi Bill,
Yes, Alien already support callbacks... maybe you can try it instead recompiling every time :)

Cheers,
Esteban

El 23/12/2010, a las 6:22p.m., Schwab,Wilhelm K escribió: