Tuesday, June 30, 2009

LIRAsm - Current Status, and the last post

Last two weeks of working on LIR assembler provided one of the most challenging pieces of work done yet. Multiple fragment support in LIRasm was implemented almost completely, and landed in the tracemonkey repo. I got to look up current source code, understand the way it is performing, modify it to support mutliple fragments, battle with segfaults and memory leaks, and do a whole lot of implementation and re-implementation before finally getting an acceptable version. And it would be correct to say the hardest things bear the sweetest fruits in the end. I am really happy that I finished this part of the project.
Undoubtedly, I got great support from my project mentor, jorendorff, humph, and graydon. Without their support, guidance and everlasting patience, I would never have been able to come so far. Although the assembler is far from finished, it has been a great journey so far, with its ups and downs, and we have managed to pull through so far. I really respect this community and the people I have been working with, and I just can't see its engagement with me ending.
In the process, I fear I have disappointed people and committed some stupid mistakes. In particular, I think last post in my blog sent the wrong message to many people, and I would like to clarify whatever I believe was uncalled for on my part. I think I sounded disappointed and possibly hateful(I am not finding the right word here) in the overall tone of the post. It represented in general my feeling at that time, since I had worked hard on the project and most of my work was not going to be used in the new world. I think it was just a manifestation of the feelings associated with the unfortunate event of code duplication. Everyone loves their work.

Anyway, I am very much grateful to Mozilla Education for providing me with this opportunity to work on such a real project. I think its a great gesture, and will definitely publicise it in my college so that more juniors can benefit from it.

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