embedded device version, nanoparrot

[allison]

Create a stripped-down version of Parrot suitable for running on embedded devices. May be no more than a bytecode interpreter.

[jkeenan]

As I have commented on some other tickets created nearly two years ago, I think these very long-term objectives belong on a wiki page somewhere rather than acquiring senior status in our bug tracking system.

Can we have some evaluation of this by people who have explored the question of Parrot on embedded devices?

Thank you very much.

kid51

[whiteknight]

I don't know that we are going to have a canonical embeddable version of Parrot. Different platforms (iPhone, Android, etc) are likely going to have different requirements and different capabilities that we won't be able to support in an easy cookie-cutter kind of way.

Implicit in this ticket is the idea that we make certain systems in Parrot optional: That we use some kind of build-directives to seamlessly exclude certain systems from being included in the build and possibly provide some kind of query interface for detecting what features Parrot has been built with. One example is the --without-threads configure flag which builds Parrot without threading support. I think we had something similar with sockets as well (but that may have been ripped out).

If we do want to move down that path, we would have to first determine a list of non-essential systems which Parrot could be built without, then determine a consistent way to build Parrot without those systems, and also provide a consistent interface to determine which features Parrot has available. Those ideas likely do belong on the wiki somewhere and not here as a ticket.

I recommend we close this one.

[jkeenan]

I'll take that as an okay to close. Thanks for responding.

kid51