[MUD-Dev] Re: DevMUD: Inheritable modules

[Thandor <thandor#donut,dhis.org>]

On Sat, Oct 31, 1998 at 06:26:05PM +0100, The Arrow wrote:
> What functionality do we want from the compiler/vm modules?
> In my own mind, the compiler is just a black box, that wants the name of a
> file to compile, and returns the compiled code together with a pointer (or a
> handle or a name) to the VM needed to interpret the code.  More or less the
> same with VMs, you give it a piece of code to interpret, and it returns a
> succes/failure code.

I think that explains what I'm talking about. A compiler is obviously going
to be tied to the VM that interprets it's code. If we have two different
VMs that both use a different byte code language, then obviously they both
need a seperate compiler - unless we introduce an intermediate
representation and have another module that is VM specific handle
converting this intermediate representation that the compilers produce into
runable VM code. I personally think the compiler pairs with a single VM is
a better way - each VM may have multiple compilers, but each compiler only
targets a single VM.

- Shane King.