Operator Precedence and Patches.

[Tony van der Hoff]

On 5 Mar 2002, in message <200203051322.NAA15631 at inputplus.demon.co.uk>,
ralph at inputplus.co.uk wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Carl Hetherington's patched our local copy of defmod thus.
> 
I assume that's !OSLib.tools.Defmod2.support.c.x.

>      /* synchronisation error */
>     -x_LOCAL_ERROR( Error_Sync, 1 + 1U<<30, "Try/Catch Synchronisation
> Error" 
>     +x_LOCAL_ERROR( Error_Sync, 1 + (1U<<30), "Try/Catch Synchronisation
> Error
>      
>      /* exception stack overflow */
>     -x_LOCAL_ERROR( Error_XStack, 2 + 1U<<30, "Too many nested x_TRY
> blocks" )
>     +x_LOCAL_ERROR( Error_XStack, 2 + (1U<<30), "Too many nested x_TRY
> blocks"
>      
> Given `+' has higher precedence that `<<' that looks right from here.
> Thought it worth passing back to OSLib.
> 
I appreciate that, thank you. Interestingly, this bug(?) was not present in
the general-purpose version of this module in OSLibSupport, and from which
this derived. Someone must have thought it was better without the brackets.
Would that someone like to comment?

> Whilst I'm here, we (http://riscose.sf.net/) want to try and keep up to
> date with OSLib changes.  I see the OSLib download page only gives the
> last two or three versions.  Given their size this is understandable.
> But is it possible that patches could be available too, and left there
> for longer so we can see the changes made over five or ten versions?
> Alternatively, is an OSLib CVS repository available where we can `cvs
> rdiff' based on tags to generate the patches whenever we want?
> 
Personally, I have only very recently put OSLib under CVS control, so that
won't help you historically. However, I believe Tom Hughes was, at one stage
maintaining a CVS repository for OSLib going back to the first 'open'
version; I don't know whether that is still the case. No doubt he will pipe
up here if so. 

I don't really fancy going back over the early versions in order to create a
full CVS repository myself; apart from the work that alone entails, the
directory structure changed very significantly at some stage. Generating the
patches for each version seems like even more work.

If there's sufficient support from users, and depending upon the state of
Tom's repository, we could possibly put it on SourceForge and make it public.
I have not approached Tom on this idea, and I've no idea how useful this idea
would be in general.

As a last resort, but probably the most practical solution in the short term,
is that although they're no longer on the web site, I do have ZIPs
on my local disc for each released version since 5.60, so at worst I could
email the source archives to you, for you to do as you like.

HTH, let me know what you want, and I'll try to oblige :-)
-- 
Tony van der Hoff         | MailTo:tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk
                          | MailTo:avanderhoff at iee.org
Buckinghamshire, England  | http:www.mk-net.demon.co.uk