Re: remote environments

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Fri, 10 Mar 89  16:49:44 CST
    From: David N Gray <Gray@DSG.csc.ti.com>
    >		 One way to look at this would be to
    >       say that it is implementation-dependent whether FINALIZE-INHERITANCE
    >       works or signals an error when given a class defined in the
    >       compile-time environment.
    > 
    >     [And no compile-time generic-function or method objects at all]
    > 
    > This is an interesting idea, but I think it's too restrictive.  Here's a
    > plausible and many-times proposed application for metaobjects which
    > would not be possible if we adopted this idea.  Suppose you made an
    > optimizing compiler that is allowed to assume that no class
    > redefinitions, no method redefinitions, and no newly-defined subclasses
    > will be created at run time.  The compiler is to take advantage of this
    ...

    I certainly don't want to prevent any implementation from doing that.

Note that I didn't say an implementation was doing that.  Such a compiler
might be a portable program, that's how some people have proposed writing
it.

    The real issue is what is the minimal functionality that all
    implementations must support.

Agreed.  Obviously if the minimal functionality does not make it possible
to write such a program portably, then it won't be portable, but it might
still exist in some implementations.  Still I think I came up with a plausible
example of how the existence of metaobjects at compile time could be useful
to some portable programs.