Hans-Martin Mosner wrote:

[snip]

> ObjectShare did an image conversion like
> this when they moved from the old bytecode set (which Squeak still uses)
> to the HPS bytecodes which are used in the VisualWorks products until
> today. The HPS bytecodes have been designed for JIT compilation, and the
> ranges of various opcode fields have been adjusted to better match the
> actual use in Smalltalk images. However, I don't know whether they used
> something like the SystemTracer or an external image converter tool. I
> vaguely remember talking with Peter Deutsch about the topic, but don't
> know anymore what his answer was...

It was/is an external tool, written in Smalltalk.  Its analogous to the tracer,
but works by reading in an image file, converting the object graph and writing a
new image.
_______________,,,^..^,,,_______________
Eliot Miranda, ObjectShare