Oh, while we're discussing major changes in the organization of images,
let's not forget the long delayed image format changes. I'd really like
to try to get it all in one big explosion of alteration so that the pain
is only experienced the one time.

At the moment, _my_ list of changes involved here includes:-

compiledmethod structure change and associated vm alterations
lose the obsoleteindexed/numbered prim tables from the vm
cut the internal prim table down to size (we just don't need 7k entries
anymore)
assorted bits suggested in the past

and of course, working out what to do about closures - Anthony's work,
mixing it with a jitter design etc.


Other things to consider include

whether ImageSegments are to be supported in the future or not (are they
still of any use after the image is super-condensed and packages can be
added?)
making headless work across all machines (I see several attempts at
doing it and it would be nice to have a single way)
oh, loads of stuff we've argued about.

The pain I refer to is that many of the above would make for a cut in
the backwards compatability story of squeak. Right now we can just about
run images back to 1.3 or whatever on current VMs. After a change in CM
format that would no longer be true. Personally I think that it would be
worth it but other people (admittedly demented people lacking in
intelligence :-) ) might disagree.

tim

-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Strange OpCodes: FSM: Fold, Spindle and Mutilate