oldest bits in Squeak?
Lex Spoon
lex at cc.gatech.edu
Wed Feb 18 18:11:19 UTC 2004
Timothy Rowledge <tim at sumeru.stanford.edu> wrote:
> > How old are the oldest bits in Squeak? When was the last time an image
> > was created from scratch, as opposed to being modified from a previous
> > version?
>
> Well that's two quite separate questions. I'm pretty sure the answer to
> the first one is likely to be 'from about 1978' since my assumption is
> that st-80 image 1 was cloned from a st-78 image. Whether that was in
> turn cloned from a 76 or even eventually a 72 I couldn't say - but I
> bet Dan or Ted could.
>
> The last time an image was made from scratch could be more recent than
> you'd expect. Ale. is/was doing work with a system that can do that.
> He's mentioned it a few times on the list.
True. I will count a clone as preserving the bits, so long as the most
it does is rearrange some header formats without changing the data.
After all, if you take a hard line on this, then you have to consider
loading and saving an image to be generating a new version, which is
kinda silly.
And furthermore, the real issue for me is not the "bits" part but the
continuous modification (and branching) of a running program. Even a
complete rearrangement of the lew-level format does not constitute
restarting the program from scratch. When the program restarts it will
just feel a little different than before, but it will continue at the
same point it left off.
It sounds like 1977 is a good year to go with. Jecel, the green book
citation you found is excellent. Thanks everyone!
-Lex
More information about the Squeak-dev
mailing list
|