On Apr 13, 2004, at 12:26 PM, stéphane ducasse wrote:

> nathanael was using monticello a lot recently for the traits and I 
> think that you can get some valuable comments from him. I send this 
> email publicly because other MC user may have suggestions too.
> My summary on his comments is: we need first class packages to avoid 
> to rely
> on naming conventions and to be able to build more powerful 
> applications.

Stef,

Having first class packages would be great.  If somebody comes up with 
a model for them, I will happily extend Monticello to support it.  I 
don't think the model itself need be very complicated: you just need a 
named Package object with a way to add and remove Class objects as well 
as MethodReferences for extensions to classes to other packages.  One 
decision you'll have to make is whether to have the package object 
explicitly reference all of its methods, or to have some kind of rule 
like "a package contains any methods belonging to one of its classes 
that are *not* explicitly referenced by another package in the same 
image".  You'll also need (I'd think) some way of ensuring that classes 
and methods only belong to one package at a time.

The bigger piece of work will be getting usable tool support.  The best 
bet at this point, I think, would be to use OmniBrowser to build a 
browser set that made use of the new package model.  I imagine that 
Colin might help with this once your model was done.

>  Do you want me to ask alex to help you a bit for the bytecode loader 
> because we have some time now (at least he should have ;))?

Sure, if he wants to do that I can explain to him what needs to be done.

Avi