[Sugar-devel] Binary Blobs

[Sascha Silbe]

On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 03:23:22PM -0400, Wade Brainerd wrote:

> One proposal is to have a build machine which supports cross compiling
> all our supported architectures, which can compile the blobs.  Then we
> include all the blobs inside the .xo bundle.  This is like what OSX
> does with Application bundles.
>
> Another is to support compile-on-install.  This requires a build
> system to be present on the user's machine, which is a steep
> requirement.
Actually I'm suggesting (and to some extent have already implemented) to 
combine both. We want users to be able to
a) modify their activities, including the code written in compiled 
languages,
b) share their modified code with friends, even those using different 
hardware
c) share their activities in the middle of the jungle without internet 
access.

For this to work, either the one modifying the activity needs to 
crosscompile for each and any architecture, or the one receiving the 
modified activity needs to compile it for their architecture.

Because compilation is often a rather resource intensive task, it's 
useful to do this on as few machines as possible. We can achieve that by
a) sharing precompiled blobs as well (in case of matching architectures)
b) precompiling for as much architectures as possible on aslo (for those 
shared via aslo instead of directly in the middle of the jungle).

OTOH, internet access might be more expensive (monetary / time / 
whatever) than compilation, so sharing bundles containing precompiled 
blobs for just one architecture or even none at all is useful as well.

CU Sascha

-- 
http://sascha.silbe.org/
http://www.infra-silbe.de/
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