> If platforms support memory mapped files in some coherent way, it would be
> possible to expose data to the Squeak object memory without necessarily
> having it part of the virtual image.  One might imagine an ExternalForm
> which uses this mechanism to end up with HUGE numbers of pictures.  The
> same thing might be true for making big movies with Squeak.
> 

I'm not sure this is useful enough to merit another requirement on new ports.
mmap() might be available on all the platforms now, but if you don't have it,
you *really* don't have it and probably can't simulate it.  Plus read and write
work fine for huge files, whereas mmap() has a significant issue: it sucks
up address space.  An x86 "only" has 4GB of address space at a time.


If we want huge files, then I vote we extend the file primitives to
handle 64-bit arguments.


-Lex