Nope. You are getting off to the wrong foot. Think of the virtual image
is a little, one-person, object database.

A .jar file is just .class files ZIPped. A Squeak Archive (.sar) is the
Squeak equivalent.

When Jecel said there isn't anything like it on the Java side, he meant
it. There are certainly lots of little databases in Java land, but the
"core Java platform" doesn't have a little, one person, object database,
so it isn't part of everyday life for all Java developers and it isn't
woven into how people test, develop, distribute, and update code. In
Smalltalk, the image is presumed (all major Smalltalks have an image),
so the development tools leverage the image.

--David

untz wrote:

> Hello again!
>
> Ok... From what everyone is telling me, I am starting to envision an
> 'image' as something which is synomynous with Java jar files and
> VC++ DLLs, and C# Assemblies... Please correct me if I am wrong.

On Oct 23, 2005, at 7:38 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:

>
>> There really isn't anything like it on the Java side. It is like the
>> "core" files that Unix generates when a task runs into some serious
>> error or receives a certain signal. You can restart the program from
>> that point later on (in a debugger for the case of an error). Or think
>> of the "sleep mode" in most laptops. 
>