🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <39822@linus.UUCP> eachus@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
>
>     If setting the open  count  negative makes a library  permanently
>resident (at least  till the  next warm boot, or someone intentionally
>diddles the bits) we get the following rule:

Not the present behavior of any amiga library. It is also a bad
precedent to set. It should somehow tell the user/programmer that
something bad has happened. However it may only be a notification
and not a dead end item.

>
>     When a  library is opened  by a task, if the (open) count is
>     non-negative, increment it by one.  When a library is closed
>     decrement  the count by one.  Libraries may only be unloaded
>     when the count is zero.

This already occurs! and it works well, it saves on memory.

>
>     Simple and sweet.  I like the idea  of ratcheting the count down,
>but  setting all negative  counts to minus  one or some other value is
>equally acceptable.    In   any case, other  than  to  very  simple OS
>changes,  no   fuss, no  bother.   It might  be nice   to  add a  make
>permanently resident call, and  a  force unload utility, but these are
>frills.  And it is all  very  useful. A library  could force itself to
>stay resident  if it opened a  resouce behind the users  back  when it
>needed to maintain state.  (Such a library would have to track itself,
>but this shouldn't be hard if it is needed.)

It is not a good idea to put this stuff in any of the libraries and
begin a precedent of tolerating software bugs.  We must strive for
perfection in this operating system and associated applications or
we will eventually wind up limited by our own short sightedness.

If we expect to continue to make progress we must be able to count on
certain activities in the os and applications. The ones that for some
reason or another fail to work properly must be revved to that other
applications and os software can count on well running execution
environment.


-- 
Dale Luck     Boing, Inc. {cbmvax|oliveb|pyramid}|!amiga!boing!dale
Although I do contract work for Amiga-LosGatos, my opinions probably
don't represent those of Commodore or its management or its engineers,
but I think the world would be a better place if they did.