Re: [DotGNU]Melody

[Norbert Bollow]

Marco Manfredini <address@hidden> wrote:

>  >>* Every dotGNU language can compile to Melody.
>  >>* Every Melody can be compiled into IL.
>  >>* Every Melody can be compiled into JavaVM.
>  >>
>  >
>  > Why compile Melody to *two* bytecode formats???  Sounds like
>  > unneccessary effort in terms of compiler code that would need to
>  > be written and maintained!?
> ???
> This decouples a language compiler from the back-end. It should make 
> work simpler indeed, since a new compiler has to support only one 
> back-end language (Melody).

I believe that much of the discussion which has happened already
on this list can be summarized by saying that we have generally
agreed on an architecture that allows each language to be
compiled to just one bytecode format (that can be chosen
depending on the language) and which makes it easy for multiple
such bytecode formats to be supported by the DotGNU platform.

In the history of computing, bytecode formats are still
relatively young.  I'm pretty sure that there will still be
significant innovation in this area for quite some time.
I feel the DotGNU platform should be very accomodating to such
innovation, allowing all kinds of new formats to be integrated
with relative ease.

> JavaVM code and IL code cannot interoperate because they are
> tied to their language runtime. Or can they?

I think that one of the main points of the specs that Enzo and
Barry have been working on is to create a uniform interface that
makes it easy for different pieces of code to interoperate
regardless of whether these pieces of code run on the same
machine or not, and regardless of whether the different pieces
of code come in the same bytecode format or not.

Greetings, Norbert.

-- 
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Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet   (near Zurich, Switzerland)
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