Re: [DotGNU]Dotgnu written in C#?

[DrDiettrich]

Fergus Henderson wrote:
> 
> On 10-Aug-2003, DrDiettrich <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Fergus Henderson wrote:
> >
> > > What happens if the software needs to do something which neither the IDE
> > > nor the user know how to do?
> >
> > Can you please give me any single concrete example of such a situation?
> 
> Sure, I could give you lots.  For example, getting pointers to the start
> and end of the writable data segment (conservative garbage collectors
> need this information, but current environments don't provide any
> standard interface to it).

Okay, obviously my question was not precise enough :-(

I meant an example, which can be solved by any Auto... or configure
procedure.
It should be obvious what happens if nobody knows how to do something on
a specific target platform - the program can't be built.

> Pushing the problem into "libraries" doesn't make it go away.
> Those libraries still have to be implemented.

Correct, but once you give it a name and separate it from a specific
program, the known solutions for other platforms can be used in more
than only that single specific program. In CLI terms this means a move
from the App into the Portability namespace and assembly ;-)

My idea behind the libraries is to push known solutions into public
scope, for reuse in other code and further extension by other gurus. The
other ideas go into the same direction, to make free software not only
usable as monolithic blocks, but instead to encourage the construction
of reusable building blocks.

In the scope of this group we have to face the existence of
incooperative elements, which define and provide CLI libraries for very
specific platforms. I've asked this question already, how far such
libraries beyond the ECMA standard should be implemented for pnet. It
might be a good idea to provide equivalent GNU libraries, which can and
should be used widely in further GNU CLI applications. Then I also see a
chance, when we can construct libraries and APIs which work on more than
only Unix platforms, that these more portable libraries will be used
instead of the proprietary counterparts, even by developers on non-Unix
platforms. Shall we start a new thread, for the discussion of these
thoughts?

DoDi