If cre2 meets the standard and community agree, I do not care to be honest, I just mentioned PCRE because it is the “de facto standard” and we are tired of not being compatible :)
About an in-image solutions in general: Yes, it is better than rely in a solution like that. Also about in-image solutions in general: It is harder to maintain them. We are a small community and we cannot allow us to have everything we need implemented in image. Using an FFI solution is a perfect valid way and IMO is preferred many times because of this maintainability issue. Of course, it does not applies to all cases with same intensity :) I don’t know the cost of maintain a regex lib in-image. I know at the moment is infinite because there is no-one there doing it (and I know I do now have the time). So we stay for years with a suboptimal solution :( Anyway I want to point to some things I (In my “architect” role, or whatever is what I do here) I always think: 1- This solution is state-of-the-art? 2- is it maintained or the cost to maintain it can be absorbed ? 2.1- Is maintained by whom? 2.2- Will this kick us back if maintainers leave? 3- is it well tested? 4- is it well documented? People often forgets that making libraries is a commitment with your user community, is a lot more than “I do this and then I forget”. Of course you can proceed like that (and not few of my own projects are of use-and-throw), but we as “pharo makers” need to take this into account with priority to other variables. Notice that “performance” is not in this list. I care a lot about performance, but I care a lot more about the other points. Now, that does not means we do not make decisions we later regret (we are humans, after all… and this is a learning process). Cheers, Esteban > On 6 Feb 2019, at 02:38, Pierce Ng <pie...@samadhiweb.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 05, 2019 at 07:25:07PM +0100, Norbert Hartl wrote: >>> Am 05.02.2019 um 16:16 schrieb Sven Van Caekenberghe <s...@stfx.eu>: >>> Still, there are advantages to an in-image solution, can't says this >>> enough, these external lib dependencies pose their own problems ... >> +1 > > Libraries like libgit2, libssh2 and quite a few more are already a core > part of Pharo, so I'd say philosophically might as well go all in to > make FFI to external libraries an intrinsic part of computing with > Pharo, not just for developing Pharo itself. The more people use UFFI, > the better it will become. > > >