[clean-list] Re: Clean and the Open-Source community

[Marco Kesseler]

>The dynamic linker, written in Clean, is more than just a linker. It is 
>actually an extension of the Clean run-time system to manage dynamics. A 
>relatively small part of the Clean code does the actual loading and linking 
>of code. It is certainly possible to replace it with an Linux equivalent. 
>Using Clean's C-interface, it should be possible to even re-use existing 
>open-source code.
>
>The other low-level part of the dynamic run-time system resides in the 
>application itself: the decoding/encoding of the Clean's internal graph. It 
>is written in x86-assembler. Should not be too much of a problem to port it 
>to x86-Linux. For other linuxes, it should be re-written. Part of the rewrite 
>could be done in Clean and the rest in ABC-code or assembler.
>  
>
Is there any fundamental reason why the assembler cannot be replaced 
completely by say - C? Also for the rest of the runtime system.

A while ago, I spent some time in both the PowerPC and Intel assembly 
code so that I could obtain a Linux PowerPC version. I succeeded, but I 
also got the impression that it would have been better to avoid assembly 
completely. And yes, I know that - long ago - I also wrote a transputer 
garbage collector in assembly. But if I had to do it now, I would do it 
differently.

It would not only be better for portability, but it would also make it 
easier for people to jump in and actually understand the system.

regards,
Marco Kesseler