Loading SqueakMap packages question

Avi Bryant avi.bryant at gmail.com
Tue Jan 10 23:48:14 UTC 2006


On Jan 10, 2006, at 3:44 PM, tim Rowledge wrote:

>
> On 10-Jan-06, at 2:48 PM, Timothy Reaves wrote:
>
>> Why does doing this block all other threads in the VM, including  
>> the UI?
>>
> It doesn't. Which is to say:-
> -the threads in this case are not in the VM (the vm doesn't have  
> much to do with Squeak threads except for finding the highest  
> priority runnable one and making it active) but in the image.
> -it's not so much blocking the UI process as simply running in it  
> and not calling World doOneCycle (or whatever)  as part of its work.
>
> I'm not sure one would want the rest of the UI to be responsive  
> when loading packages. Depending on the package it might be loading  
> new code that affects things currently running. Kind of nice to let  
> it all load and install and get to a proper stable state  
> (hopefully!) before returning control to the user.

Well, what Timothy may be asking about is the delay when SqueakMap  
refreshes the map of available packages.  IIRC, this is done by  
loading an image segment, which is a primitive, and so *does* block  
the whole VM.

Avi



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