Modularity

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2016-03-14 21:36, RM wrote:
> Recently "elsewhere" a chap working with Livecode was complaining
> about the 'bloat'
> in a standalone between the 6 series and the 7 series (he's going to
> go seriously sour when he sees 8)
> because he is trying to squeeze standalones onto Android devices with
> limited storage.

Some empirical data - for a blank stack saved for Android, the size of 
the APK in each is:

    LiveCode 6.7 - 2.4Mb
    LiveCode 7.1 - 6Mb
    LiveCode 8.0 - 6.3Mb

What people see as 'bloat' between 6.7 and 7.1 is nothing more than the 
Unicode data tables which are essential if you actually want text to be 
processed correctly and efficiently - the actual code size of the engine 
has not changed much.

The difference between 7.1 and 8.0 is most likely due to the increased 
internal symbol table that 8.0 needs to have at present to support LCB 
*modules* - if you want modularity then you need to store the 
information to bind the modules together and this does take a little 
space at present. (Although we do have a plan to do the matching up at 
standalone build time at some point - which would eliminate the need for 
the extra symbol tables - assuming the standalone does not want to load 
modules dynamically).

> So; what chance "modularity" (if that's what the thing is callled) in
> the foreseeable future?

Well, the refactoring was the start to getting to 'modularity' - 
previously the code for any piece of syntax was grouped under the first 
word of the piece of syntax even if they covered completely different 
areas, now code is grouped by what it does and is separate from the code 
which parses and dispatches actions. There's still more work to do to 
modularise the existing engine feature set, but the critical part (the 
refactoring) has been done.

Apart from that, LCB modules are the mechanism by which such modularity 
will occur - for example, right now, if you don't ask to have the 
browser widget included then you don't pay the cost for CEF being put 
into your standalone on Desktop. (I should point out that, even if the 
code is still implemented in C++, LCB will be the formalism by which 
syntax is defined - when we get Open Language - and bound to the C++ 
methods implementing it, regardless of whether there is actually any LCB 
code needed).

It is worth point out, however, that the largest code carrying parts of 
the engine are already optional - that would be things like revXml, 
revDB and drivers, revBrowser etc. They are only included if you ask and 
they can be weighty because they include third-party libraries which are 
not necessarily modular and small in and of themselves.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps