A little namespace "proposal"

goran.krampe at bluefish.se goran.krampe at bluefish.se
Thu Apr 15 00:46:11 UTC 2004


Hi!

"Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
> > Well, I appreciate all ideas. :)
> 
> Don't do it. Absolutely don't. Do not try to "fix" both Smalltalk and the
> tools while you are doing what you're doing right now. You just won't have
> the time to fix *everything* and if there isn't a migration path (e.g.,
> tools like MC continuing to work without being namespace aware yet) you're
> loosing. Noone will use what you do (including myself) if the first thing
> that happens is that it breaks all the tools. It's not going to work.

I agree - it would only be a valid path if the tools still work.

> Stick with simplest thing that could possibly work. Just have the classes
> keep their "full name" and have them available in Smalltalk under that name.
> It means tools which use #name will continue to function. Then, for the
> future namespace aware tools add messages which can be used to retrieve the
> short as well as the fully qualified name.

Mmm.

> Unless you consider what you do a merely theoretical exercise (in which case
> I won't stand in your way) you should be more concerned with how people
> migrate their stuff into a namespace-aware world rather than a few hundred

I am concerned with that, believe me.

> bytes of wasted space by having classes both in Smalltalk as well as in
> their namespace. It might be nicer that way but considering the tradeoffs
> ... who cares?

I wasn't considering storage space. I just know things get messy when
two things need to be kept in synch. Avi suggested virtualizing
Namespace instead of Smalltalk though, your thoughts?

> Cheers,
>   - Andreas

regards, Göran



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