1.3.0 release schedule

[Andreas Rossberg]

Hi Raphael,

thanks for your help.

> [I don't reply to the users list but on the hackers list instead.  This
> discussion is and should remain internal.]

I know, problem is that somehow all postings to hackers currently go to the
users list. Thorsten?

> Don't be scared of the changes with the new ByNeed.  We haven't broken
> everything with our proposal.  The idea was rather to factor out the
> orthogonal concepts that were mixed up with futures.  Those concepts
> are: read-only views of variables, by-need synchronization, and failed
> values (called failed 'futures').

I understand that. And I see it's an improvement, but it is not fully
conservative. I also understand that we can adapt (and you showed how,
thanks a lot!). What I don't see, however, is how to adapt in a way that
will work with the upcoming release *as well as* with the previous ones.
That was the reason why I said we have to sync the Alice release with 1.3.0,
or alternatively, seek for assistance. ;-)

So the changes you propose are already helpful for making a sync'ed release.
But if you could provide good hacks to support backward-compatible
implementations we would be even more thankful.

> >       'Future.isByneed':
> >          fun {$ X}
> >             {IsFuture X} andthen
> >             case {Value.toVirtualString X 0 0} of  % hack taken from
> > Inspector
> >                &_|&<|&f|&u|&t|&u|&r|&e|& |&b|&y|&N|&e|&e|&d|_ then true
> >             else false
> >             end
> >          end
>
> Well, that hack is not backward compatible...  In our model, a by-need
> computation is simply a thread that synchronizes on the need of the
> variable.  There's no difference with other threads.
>
> Now it depends what you use this operation for.  If you use it for
> implementing isLazy, I have a proposal.

Yes, that's what it is there for. Sorry for not explaining that (the naming
is historic).

    - Andreas


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