Name spaces in Spoon

Michael Latta lattam at mac.com
Sat May 27 17:05:46 UTC 2006


> If we're planning on refactoring Squeak, we're going to come across
> instances like this.  At present, one has to be very, very careful when
> changing some parts of the image, as it's very easy to break something
> and leave oneself without access to tools - this is the responsibility
> that comes with the power of being able to change anything 'live'.  I'd
> love to see a way of reducing this danger, and I'm very interested that
> Craig appears to have provided us with two distinct ways - one of which
> we appear to be intent on removing from consideration!
> 
> 		- Peter

I think this is exactly why the approach of using two images is better.
With Spoon I can change the target image as needed to get it from the "old"
state to the "new" state without it needing to be functional in support of
tools or even a UI.  If you tried to refactor Morphic in-place the risk to
functioning UI would be too great.  I see no need for a module system to
attempt to address this problem, as the Spoon approach will always be far
better.

A good argument can be made to always use two images.  Image 1 is always
tools, and image 2 is always domain objects.

Michael





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list