PoolDictionary handling (was Re: [ANN] "Upgrade to 3.6 FullImage" package on SqueakMap)

Stephen Pair stephen at pairhome.net
Sat May 17 14:40:28 UTC 2003


Andreas Raab wrote:

>>Would it not be better to go ahead and make the VM actually
>>send the #value message...it seems like that the right thing
>>to do and would buy us a lot in terms of 
>>experimenting with new approaches for these kinds of things.
>>    
>>
>
>You lost me. How does sending #value or not to a binding affect pool
>management? 
>

It doesn't, it just enables the pool to control how it's variables get 
accessed.  The binding for a pool dictionary might send a message of the 
form #getPoolVar (where PoolVar is replaced with the actual 
variableName) to the pool dictionary.  Any pool dictionary could then 
override such a method if it needs to.

With their own Behavior, pool dictionaries could dispense with a lot of 
the extra stuff that a regular class needs (such as a meta class).  It 
would also be in the pools' Behavior where you'd create the default 
methods to access each of the defined pool vars.

Anyway, I'm not sure that I even like what I'm saying on this topic, but 
I thought I'd mention it in case it might lead to other possible solutions.

>BTW, you don't need to change the VM for this - a slight compiler
>modification is all that's needed. We have this modification already in
>place for stores into 'other than association' bindings (such as read-only
>bindings).
>

Right, and I see that Anthony has already done this in his compiler.

- Stephen




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