John M McIntosh wrote:
> 
> Hi, I'm going to be building a new mac VM in a few days. [snip]
> So if anyone has any requests (that won't take too long to do) please
> let me know.

At your prodding.... :-)

I would request cross-platform support for truncating files (or setting
file size) and for ensuring a file is flushed and/or synced (whatever it
takes to make sure data for a file is really, really on the disk). This
would permit Squeak to be used more easily for database type
applications such as transactions.

Has the Stable Squeak effort addressed this already?

The lack of these primitives was an issue limiting the usefulness of the
Pointrel Data Repository System code I released for Squeak. If these
primitives existed, then the Pointrel system in Squeak would have more
applicability in creating an alternate reliable source code storage
system for Squeak.

I had previously posted some related comments in July 2000.
  http://squeak.cs.uiuc.edu/mail/squeak/msg05018.html

Here was a detailed note by you on the Mac side of the issue:
  http://squeak.cs.uiuc.edu/mail/squeak/msg05061.html

-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software 
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com