Dan Ingalls wrote:

> 1. A minimal kernel
> This would be something like the 240k "tiny" image I made from Squeak a few years ago (had compiler, files, minimal graphics (only enough to put up a transcript), collections, strings and numbers).  I would like to go farther with this by using the OS for the transcript, so that all this thing can really do is read in the next package.
With the latest imagesegments stuff, does this even need the compiler stuff?
I like the idea of leaving out all graphics - I think a simple prim or
two would provide a transcript-to-os capability. 

> 
> 2. Basic Graphics
> This would be the kernel graphics (Form, Color, etc) common to MVC and Morphic.

> 
> 3. Full Files
> The kernel might only know about the current directory.  This would fill out the rest, along with all the stuff there now that isn't essential.
Yup. Enough  of these two to allow it to do a command line image
processing filter application would be a good boundary.

> 
> 4. Development system kernel
> All the browser models
Guess this ought to follow 5/6a & b :-)


> 
> What does this say about our architecture for modules?  To me it says that what we want to start with in the image is really just the support necessary to receive a new module. 

Yes! Start with just enough VM to load an image that can do just enough
to load the rest of what you need - including the rest of the VM. We'll
get running on Palms yet!



> A parallel sub-project would be to extend our tools to work with this new architecture.
This is the one that I really suspect is the hard part. the tools must
make it so easy to 'do the right thing' that nobody would consider being
naughty. 

I wish, how I wish, that I knew how to do it... but at least it sounds
like some people have some good ideas.

As for a proposal on how to do any of it: my two-pen'orth is that
creating the base image (and probably the addons) seems like a good job
for a descendent of the systemTracer. Drive it prescriptively rather
than by example. And this would be a really good time to get the newer
compiledmethod formats done, and blocks completed.

tim