RE: Re: xPL announcement/description protocol -- was xPLDiag

["Ian Lowe" <ian.lowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>There is a a fundemental conflict at the heart of these discussions..

Nah - there's a mindset shift needed perhaps, but it's not a conflict.

> However, we don't write any of our applications in a cross platform
manner - in fact, if > cross-platform was a goal, that would rule out
anything written in .NET.

*cough* mono *cough* .Net is portable to Linux and MacOS. As long as you
don't invoke win32 calls in your code.

> Unless we stop writing in .NET, xPL will always be a Windows oriented
system - but just > how many developers would we have left if we took
that path?  I seem to be the only
> Windows coder here that prefers not to program in .NET.

Cross platform support doesn't mean that we have to write our own
applications in a cross platform way, nor that we have to write apps
that can be recompiled across the entire spectrum of OSes. It simply
means that we have to enforce nothing within the protocol that *can't*
run cross platform.

There's a fundamental difference between the Protocol being platform
agnostic, and all applications being written that way. We need to be
platform agnostic, we *don't* need to write all of our apps that way.

> But in any case, how many of us actually want to test our applications
on multiple
> platforms that we have no interest in ourselves?

Very few I would suspect.

> A lot of the issues that are being discussed (such as whether xPLHal
should be
> mandatory) would not be such a problem if we stopped being
half-hearted about platforms > and made a decision between being either
Windows-only, or a *genuine* cross-platform
> implementation, covering both apps and protocol.

Just because someone ports Linux to your microwave doesn't mean that
anyone expects to be able to run any app without modification on that
platform.

If we state that the minimum level to support a "platform" is a
working
hub, xplhal and development framework, then we have a solid platform.

In most cases, chopping the logic around between platforms is a lot
simpler once the basic elements are in place - if we provide those basic
elements, it's over to the experts on that platform to make it work.

Point in case - you have written a C++ Hub for windows. Nobody now
expects you (nor should they) to port it to OSX, Linux, VMS(!) etc.
Instead, it would now be up to someone like Gerry to make sure that the
best practice agreed for the C++ Hub on windows is now implemented
across on Java. If someone wants an OSX version... Then they can code
one from the examples already produced.

Ian.