From: Meinrad Recheis <meinrad.recheis@...>
Date: 2008-04-04T19:53:32+09:00
Subject: Re: accomplishing compatibility (was Re: RUBY_IMPLEMENTATION)

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 11:59 AM, Eleanor McHugh
<eleanor@games-with-brains.com> wrote:
> On 4 Apr 2008, at 10:28, Meinrad Recheis wrote:
>
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Meinrad Recheis
> >
> >
> > > also as history shows, the existence of the c++ standard did not make
> > > the major c++ compilers fully compatible to each other ;)
> > > -- henon
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > I know this has already been discussed some time ago, but IMHO it is
> > very important to point out that a suite of standardized tests which
> > all implementations are tested against is much more practical not to
> > mention much easier to provide than a written specification.
> >
>
>  At the risk of sounding heretical, beyond a certain level is compatibility
> between all the major implementations that important?
>  C and C++ both seem to have thrived pretty well in the wild without the
> majority of implementations being 100% compatible with each other or with
> the standards and the same is true with many other languages (Fortran,
> Basic, Lisp, etc.).
>
>
>  Ellie
>

At least it would reduce porting effort for everyone who intends to
target more than one ruby implementation. The number of different
implementation times the number of platforms times the number of
different byte code formats will be quite high! This is why I think we
need as much compatibility as possible.
-- Henon