Re: ext4.pk + suggestions

[Jose E. Marchesi]

Hi there.

> "Jose E. Marchesi" <jemarch@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>> Would you like to maintain ext4.pk in the poke source tree?
>>
>
> Yes, definitely. Some things are still to be done, but this version is
> quite okay for general use. I'll read up a bit more about maps. I hope I
> will have time to do it properly. I will write a map for it, since ext4
> filesystems are quite big. I'll ask on IRC if there are some user-type
> questions.

Thanks.

In that case we need:

1) For you to create an account in savannah.gnu.org and let us know your
   username, so we can add you to the `poke' group.

2) A patch submission for the addition of ext4.pk and related pickles,
   in unidiff format against master (git format-patch).  In order to
   ease discussion, please either inline the patch in the mail body or
   attach it as text/x-diff or text/x-patch.

It would be nice to have some documentation and tests for the pickle as
well...

>>>      - 'save' output file offset + size
>>
>> I don't know what you mean here?
>>
>
> For example, let's say I want to "save :from 128#B :size 8#B :file
> something :destination_offset 512#B". I don't remember exactly why I
> needed this - I guess loading into memory and copying would work fine as
> well.

We can add support for that.  Noted down in the todo.  Thanks for the
suggestion :)

>>>      - stdin, fprintf, and printf accepting string (I tried to create a
>>>        function 'debug' which calls printf but failed :( ; maybe I did
>>>        something wrong)
>>
>> I don't know what you mean with "printf accepting string".
>>
>
> For example, I remember I tried to define the following:
>
> fun debug = (string fmt, args...) void : {
>   if (DEBUG_ENABLED) {
>     printf fmt, args;
>   }
> }
>
> printf would like to know at compile time the fmt so it can throw the
> appropriate errors. I think macros would solve this problem and would be
> nicer.

Ah yes.  In order to support that we would need a run-time version of
printf.  Something like:

fun _pkl_printf = (string fmt, args...)
{
  for (char in fmt)
  {
    ...

  }
}

Which would be a fun thing to write in pkl-rt.pk :)

> Btw, I think when I'll get the installation going, I'll add poke to guix
> packages.

I think it is already there?