[whatwg] Worker feedback

[Robert O'Callahan]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> Robert O'Callahan wrote:
> > Now, with the storage mutex, are there any cases you know of where
> > serializability fails? If there are, it may be worth noting them in the
> > spec. If there aren't, why not simply write serializability into the
> > spec?
>
> Just writing that something must be true doesn't make it true. :-) I think
> it's safer for us to make the design explicitly enforce this rather than
> say that browser vendors must figure out where it might be broken and
> enforce it themselves.


If serializability is the goal then I think it can only help to say so in
the spec (in addition to whatever "explicit design" you wish to include), so
that any failure of serializability is clearly an inconsistency in the spec
that must be fixed rather than a loophole that authors and browser vendors
might think they can rely on.

I also suggest that speccing just serializability should be fine. It seems
to me the current spec is proposing one implementation of serializability
while other implementations are possible, and relying on the black-box
equivalence principle to enable other implementations. But specifying
serializability is probably simpler and may allow implementations that are
unintentionally ruled out by the "explicit design" in the spec, especially
as things become more complicated in the future. It would probably also be
clearer to authors what they can expect.

I think it's a lot like GC; we don't specify a GC algorithm, even though GC
is hard; we just have an implicit specification that objects don't disappear
arbitrarily.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
53:5-6]
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