Re: Virtual Machine in the abstract (was Re: [DotGNU]What languages should DotGNU support?)

[Fergus Henderson]

On 30-Nov-2002, Stephen Compall <address@hidden> wrote:
> > IMHO we should stop thinking in VM boxes and start allowing all
> > possibilities.  That includes LISP, Python, C++, etc. And we should
> > be able to use the natively without compiling to VM first.
> 
> Of course you mean to interpret them in their respective interpreters.
> 
> > The big advantage of DotGNU should be that we are flexible in all
> > directions, including the languages used. We should not disallow C++
> > simply because it's hard to safely compile it. If safety is
> > absolutely needed a user can use paranoid VM's, but most users will
> > not, and we should not force them into using it.
> 
> Users don't know how much security they really need.  e.g. passwords,
> VBS.  Or how about plain-text "private" emails?  And C++ support is
> certainly OK, as shown by the budding pnetC, as well as the Internet
> Virtual Machine talk a while back.

AFAIK pnetC and other C/C++ compilers for .NET (lcc, MSVC) all generate
unverifiable IL code, in general.  So they don't provide any security
guarantees.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <address@hidden>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne         |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.