Tweak mainstream in Squeak

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Tue Jul 11 06:35:44 UTC 2006


>
>> Hi,
>> this example demonstrates the main reason why I think
>> the "full" image is so important:
>> If, at the point of this refactoring (or renaming, whatever),
>> the author had your OmniBrowser loaded, it would have been
>> no big deal to just make the required changes.
>> Using the RB, you get most of these changes *for free*.
>
> Actually, I suspect that this is exactly what was done. OmniBrowser  
> is part of the Full 3.9 image, and it appears to have been  
> refactored along with everything else in the full image. The break  
> in compatibility is still a problem, though, for two reasons:
>
> First, that refactored version of OmniBrowser only works in Squeak  
> 3.9. It doesn't work in Squeak 3.6, 3.7 or 3.8. If all I cared  
> about was compatibility with the latest release of Squeak, I  
> wouldn't be complaining in the first place.
>
> Second, it's just not feasible to have all the code in the Squeak  
> world loaded into a single image. You can get a lot, I'm sure, but  
> some packages conflict with other packages. If you rely on  
> refactoring to mitigate API changes, you're going to break anything  
> that isn't in your image when you make the change.
>
>> It's so much less work this way, compared to trying to find
>> out what has changed, exactly, between newer versions.
>
> I love refactoring. But it's not a solution to this problem.

Exact

I think that having first class interface or tools to understand what  
is happening at the interface level
is important.

Stef

>
> Colin
>




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