[ENH][Modules] Delta Modules [was: Another version]

Les Tyrrell tyrrell at iserve11.lis.uiuc.edu
Mon Oct 29 04:58:25 UTC 2001


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Mark van Gulik <ghoul6 at home.com>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 2:27 AM
Subject: Re: [ENH][Modules] Delta Modules [was: Another version]


> Here's an idea:  I think the idea of being able to manipulate 
> and analyze modules *without* loading them is sufficiently 
> important that the initial release of the module system should 
> *not* actual support module loading.

That's how I started out with Oasis.  Initially, just a buffer in which I could load code and then do some quick and dirty analysis on it.  It is quite a bit more than that now.  ( http://sabine.canis.uiuc.edu:8080/Oasis ).

> Such a system will still 
> be useful for *describing*, say, how to partition an image.  

Yes- there are a number of things that I've built for Oasis before or am working on now to support just this sort of thing.

> Come to think of it, the actual loading should be a completely 
> separate, er, module. That way you can use it for directly 
> assembling production images from makefiles (without ever 
> running a single bytecode of that image).

Well, technically there is some truth to that.  Smalltalk/X does something like this, and I think that AOS also does this.  But there is more to the story than drawing lines in the image- the code that is there has to change as well.  The deepest non-modularities in Sqeuak are basically human programming practices which are at odds with a nice clean decomposition.  Tools can't change that- but they can make it more apparent, and perhaps provide a bit more firepower for certain operations.

> You'll also have a 
> nice *clean* structure (unfettered by the implementations of 
> method dictionaries and symbols etc) with which to perform 
> analysis.  Actual loading of modules into an existing image 
> should almost be an afterthought.

LIke Allen says, by the time the stuff has come back into the image, the hard work has been done.

> Sure, people will *want* it, 
> but I think these other properties might be more important.

Initially, yes- I'm very hesitant to commit to a particular approach without having had the time to propose, explore, and throw away several of them.  I've been at it off and on for 5 years, so I'm very wary of quick-fix solutions, and in particular any proposals that start with the word "just".  ( or "simplest thing that could possibly work"... lets define "simplest", "thing", "could" and "work" why don't we? ).

- les






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