[PD] self-modifying and dynamic patching

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:

> however, my experiences with abcde were the main reason i s did not 
> touch self-modifying patches for years and years. the lesson i learned 
> was: never do self-modification in patches that other people will ever 
> have to regularily use. (the original phrase would have been "never do 
> self-modification in patches that other people will ever have to 
> maintain"; however, this might give the impression that chances are low 
> that somebody else will really have to "maintain" a patch); in practice 
> you pass maintainership to somebody as soon as you give them your patch: 
> they will eventually start to modify it.

Because self-modifying patches are more tricky and complicated than most 
other things, it's especially important to aggressively abstract them. If 
you can, you abstract them in a way that each self-modifying abstraction 
represents an elementary pattern that no-one will want to modify, because 
it's too basic and fundamental, and so there's nothing that one could 
possibly want to customise about them. Therefore all the aspects that make 
sense to customise will be in abstractions that themselves are not 
self-modifying, because they use elementary self-modifying abstractions 
instead.

But that's not always easy to do or feasible.

This concept can also be useful with lots more things than just 
self-modifying patches, but it's with self-modifying patches that there is 
the most payoff.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec