Subj : On BAJA development
To   : Angus McLeod
From : Digital Man
Date : Fri Sep 09 2005 02:26 am

  Re: On BAJA development
  By: Angus McLeod to Digital Man on Thu Sep 08 2005 11:33 pm

 >   Re: On BAJA development
 >   By: Digital Man to Angus McLeod on Thu Sep 08 2005 18:00:00
 > 
 >  >  > What with JS seemingly taking a preeminent place in SBBS programming, 
 >  >  > there any room for discussion of BAJA improvements?
 >  >
 >  > Not really.
 > 
 > Ok, that's what I figured.
 > 
 >  > I mean, it can be discussed, but I'd prefer not to waste any energy
 >  > on enhancing Baja. Bug-fixes are of course still being persued. So I gues
 >  > depends on your defintion of "improvement". :-)
 > 
 > I have often contemplated "improvements" that could be made by enhancing
 > the compiler itself, rather than by adding any extra low-level
 > functionality.  For instance, passing parameters to, and returning values
 > from functions could all be achieve in the compiler.  And once, long
 > ago, I devised a (*highly* inefficient!) means of implementing arrays and
 > other structures in the compiler.
 > 
 > If BAJA were going to be supported indefinately, some of these ideas might
 > be worth the effort.  But with JS already being the first choice for new
 > development and BAJA slated for deprecation, it bviously isn't such a good
 > idea.
 > 
 >  > I'm working on making Baja dispensable. It's not quite there yet, but wil
 >  > in the v4 time-frame.
 > 
 > I'd imagine making BAJA optional and rewriting the command shells in JS
 > would be something you'd want to do for v4.  It really isn't the sort of
 > change that you want to introduce at a point-change in version.
 > 
 > Er...  I am assuming that there will be a v3 freeze soon, after which work
 > on v4 will formally begin.  With this in mind, is there any docu on what
 > changes are under consideration?  Other than the sectio "Contemplating a
 > version 4" in your "to-do" list, I mean?

I think I posted a list in the Synchronet Announcements area. Or maybe it was
Synchronet Sysops or Synchronet Discussion. Anyway, the primary changes will
be:

o Support for big endian (e.g. non-Intel) architectures
o Migration of binary configuration and data files to text-based files
  (e.g. .cnf->.ini and .dab->.tab) see v4upgrade.c for some examples
o Greater extensibility in configuration and data files
o New SMB-based file database design
o Migration of hard-coded BBS functions to customizable scripts/modules
o Support for JS command shells

.... and other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting. :-)

                                                  digital man

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The first sport to be filmed was boxing in 1894.

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