[Tinyos-devel] Request for comments on TEP 103, due August 10th

[David Moss]

I agree as well.

I see that a lot of progress has been made in this area from 1.x -> 2.x
including the compile time volume management, that's excellent.  And I did
confuse the HAL/HIL, but my cross-platform compatibility argument remains,
and it is a difference in philosophy as Johnathan pointed out.

As a developer who's using this technology, time is one of my team's most
valuable resources.  If my team has to spend twice the amount of time
testing and developing code just to get it to run on two different
platforms, then that's not worth it.  The fact that David Gay and Johnathan
are both writing the same end functionality doesn't seem worth it to me
because their time is equally valuable.  Trying to get people to adopt
hardware-dependant technology is much more difficult than getting people to
adopt hardware-independent technology.  If we eventually have 50 different
flash types, who's going to write and test all that code for the basic
storage implementations?  Not me, and not my team. Time to erase is one
thing, but time to market is another.  An increase in nitty gritty
bit-banging performance is usually not worth a delay in getting to a robust
and finished product.

Having optional platform-dependent and -independent interfaces is probably
the best route to meet everyone's needs.  If you want your app to work
everywhere, use the platform-independent interfaces.  If you want your app
to take full advantage of extra features on a specific chip, then use the
implementation tailored to that hardware.  Full documentation should be
provided on how these interfaces work, how to use them, and what to expect.

I guess what it comes down to is, I can jump in a hybrid or a ferrari and
expect them to behave the same when I push the pedals, without having to
reconfigure myself, the car, or know how their engines differ.

-David



-----Original Message-----
From: joe.polastre at gmail.com [mailto:joe.polastre at gmail.com] On Behalf Of
Joe Polastre
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 10:45 AM
To: handzisk at tkn.tu-berlin.de
Cc: Jonathan Hui; David Moss; tinyos-devel at millennium.berkeley.edu; Ramesh
Govindan
Subject: Re: [Tinyos-devel] Request for comments on TEP 103, due August 10th


> I think that this is the best way forward. Let's see what is missing from
> the current HIL interfaces that prevent David to implement his
abstraction.
> If the shortcomings can be addressed with simple changes of the existing
HIL
> interfaces, than this is the best way. If not, we should consider
including
> David's abstraction as a new HIL interface.

100% agreed.

-Joe