We need something to uniquely identify a piece of code (class, changeset, 
method version) or running object (application, object, project ...) in
squeak.
Every component in the system that needs to be uniquely identified should
get a unique ID. It's like humans and DNS ! 

What about UUID's (Unversally Unique Identifiers) from the DCE standard.
UUID's (also called GUID-Globally Unique Identifiers) are 16 byte
values, unique in time and space. I think the algorithm is free.
I think the value is composed from the MAC address (network adapter), the
current time and a random component.

Microsoft (sorry for that ;) uses GUID's to identify components and 
interfaces in COM. On Windows you can use the CoCreateGuid()-API-Function 
to create such a value. An example: {C6270642-86FA-11D3-85A5-00600874CF81}

See http://www.dsps.net/uuid.html for more.


Torsten Bergmann
Phaidros Software AG