[Opensim-dev] Should the core OpenSim distribution carry manyscripting languages?
Frisby, Adam
adam at deepthink.com.au
Mon Jun 2 03:45:48 UTC 2008
I'm personally quite in favour of us developing a CPAN-like repository
for OpenSim modules. To me it makes a very good deal of sense.
Regards,
Adam
-----Original Message-----
From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de
[mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Justin
Clark-Casey
Sent: Sunday, 1 June 2008 8:44 PM
To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
Subject: [Opensim-dev] Should the core OpenSim distribution carry
manyscripting languages?
Hi there,
Last week, Kinoc was kind enough to write an implementation of Yield
Prolog where YP is translated into underlying C# for compilation (in the
same manner as our current LSL support). This patch was included in
OpenSim in r4927.
I have nothing against Prolog (admittedly I have never had the chance to
pick up) and certainly nothing against Kinoc. However, I am concerned
that by including many scripting languages in the OpenSim core
distribution (if Prolog, why not Javascript, Ruby, Python, etc, etc.) we
incur more negatives than positives. Firstly, I'm concerned that a
proportion of this code (particularly that which no core committer has
an interest in) will at some point slip into decay, particularly if the
original contributor has moved on to other things. We've already seen
this happen with other areas of the code, such as the MSSQL database
support.
Secondly, if individual language modules do need to change in response
to other OpenSim changes without a decay option (for example, in order
that they can still compile), this places a higher burden on the core
committers and makes it more costly to enhance the codebase in general.
Thirdly, I'm concerned that the more code we have of this nature
(particular code which compiles script into c#), the more potential
security holes we have. This isn't too much of a concern right now but
will be come more of an issue in the future.
Therefore, I would argue that OpenSimulator should only include in its
core distribution support for a few scripting languages. In my opinion
these would be LSL, maybe C# and possibly one other (maybe Python).
Support for other languages would come as optional plugins, available
either directly from the author or from some satellite repository
(perhaps similar to Perl's CPAN or PHP's PEAR). I would personally
prefer to see the core OpenSim distribution kept relatively lean and
mean.
If necessary, I am happy to make any necessary infrastructure changes to
make language plugins possible/easier (which probably also means making
much needed enhancements to the plugin system).
What do other people think?
Regards,
--
justincc
Justin Clark-Casey
http://justincc.wordpress.com
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