Subject: [DGD] yet another object manager question.. or two
From: DGD Mailing List (Noah Gibbs)
Date: Fri Apr 9 13:46:00 2004

--- Michael McKiel wrote:
> I believe hardcoded defaults, like hardcoding kernel dependencies et
> al was
> mentioned in the archives, is there any reasonable reason not to do
> this?
> these are things that should likely never change.

  There are two reasons.  One is that the kernel library might change
in some way, which would change the correctness of the defaults.  The
other is that the code might change (for instance, another object might
be required by the ObjectD or wanted first and compiled before it), and
if somebody knowledgeable about the ObjectD doesn't change that, you'll
get some weird unexplained bugs.

  I don't like non-local effects (where you change something and
something apparently-unrelated elsewhere changes).  The problem with
hardcoded defaults is that you get non-local bugs if they're not
perfect.

  My way *does* require compiling about seven files twice.  However,
Phantasmal is so big at this point that the amount of double-compiled
code isn't a significant part of the whole.