Hey,
a namsepaces discussoin! (Was: Re: Partitioning the image (was
Re:Shrinking sucks!))
Ned Konz
ned at squeakland.org
Mon Feb 14 00:36:38 UTC 2005
On Sunday 13 February 2005 4:06 pm, Alan Lovejoy wrote:
> Ideally, modules should also provide for dynamic binding (and not require
> static linking.) In other words, a user should not have to load a module
> into an image "by hand" in order to use it. The module should be
> dynamically located and loaded into the image when referenced.
>
> It would be
> bad enough for a language such as C to require that all "modules" be
> "statically liniked." For the quintessential dynamic languge Smalltalk to
> do so would be criminal. Such dynamically-linked Samltallk modules would
> be completely analogous to a UNIX ".so" or Windows ".dll" file--and would
> introduce all the same issues, all of which would be susceptible to the
> same universe of possible solutions. I suggest looking at way that
> NextStep/MacOSX handle these issues.
Actually, GNU Smalltalk has what looks like a very simple solution with its
Autoload and AutoloadClass. These are objects that take the place of class
objects (and their corresponding metaclass objects) and mostly just overload
doesNotUnderstand: to load the appropriate package.
--
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com/squeak/
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