At 12:10 AM -0800 1/23/03, Brent Dax wrote:
"Must" is an awfully strong word, there. We don't really "must" do anything, though I do realize the feature is useful, hence my question.Dan Sugalski: # Since it looks like it's time to extend the packfile format and the # in-memory bytecode layout, this would be the time to start discussing # metadata. What sorts of metadata do people think are useful to have # in either the packfile (on disk) or in the bytecode (in memory).I do think that, whatever "native" (i.e. understood by Parrot) metadata we support, we *must* allow for extensibility, both for future native metadata and for third-party tools.
I'm afraid extensible metadata is going to live in its own chunk unless someone can come up with a way to embed it without penalty. (And I'm generally considering using separate chunks for the metadata the engine does understand)Moreover, this must not be implemented with a special type of metadata block, or by using sequentially-increasing numbers. (The first means that any metadata we decide to add in the future will be slower than the metadata we add now; the second has problems with several third-party tools picking the same number.)
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Dan
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