On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 8:12 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo <emaringolo@gmail.com> wrote:

2017-05-10 13:38 GMT-03:00 Cl��ment Bera <bera.clement@gmail.com>:
> On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 5:28 PM, Esteban A. Maringolo <emaringolo@gmail.com> wrote:

>> If it is a plug-in, why does it need VM recompilation?
>
> Internal plugins require VM recompilation. Only external plugins do not.

It was more of a semantic question, I'd expect a plug-in to be that,
pluggable, as you say external plugins are.
Or what is the "pluggability" of such plugins?

I would say there is 3 levels of pluggability:

1 non optional internal plugin, pluggable because it can be replaced by another internal plugin implementing the same API at VM compilation time. Used for modularity of specific aspects of the VM.

2 optional internal plugin, pluggable because it can be removed / added / replaced at VM compilation time. Used to improve performance over external plugin or to access VM functions not exposed to external plugins.��

3 external plugin, pluggable because it can be removed / added / replaced after the VM is compiled. Used for all other plugins.

So they're all pluggable in some way.

Disclaimer: I don't know about the VM internals (*), and this is not a
complain of any sort. I just wonder it is called that way.

Regards!

Esteban A. Maringolo

(*) I did compile a Squeak VM a decade ago (added two primitives) but
nothing more than that.