[squeak-dev] The solution of (Was: Creating an image from first principles)

Igor Stasenko siguctua at gmail.com
Thu Aug 7 16:12:11 UTC 2008


2008/8/7 tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org>:
>
> On 7-Aug-08, at 5:18 AM, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
>>>
>> I think the original question about creating an image from first
>> principles
>> was about transmutation, not cloning.
>
> The SystemTracer can easily create new images from specs rather than 'merely
> cloning' an existing image. It writes bits into a chunk of WordAray whic is
> then written out in a usable format. It would be trivial to provide a
> primitive that writes the new image memory to another process in a HydraVM
> instead of writing to a file. Cloning simply uses an existing image as a
> spec. There is nothing to prevent us using xml or some other horrific format
> as a spec to generate a completely from-scratch image via the tracer.
>

Apart from ability to change object formats, a SystemTracer don't give
us the ways how you can truncate an unwanted stuff from current image
to produce new, smaller one.
In either case, you have to deal with this problem yourself - by
providing an algorithms for bisecting/populating object memory with
the only stuff which you want.
What i think don't needs the proof ,  is that such algorithms can be
completely abstracted from the media which will hold a new object
memory, because their main purpose is to establishing a correct
relationships between objects - they don't need to know about any
bits/formats.

>> How does one create a Smalltalk
>> environment (i.e. an image) starting with an environment that has only
>> imperative programming tools (e.g. C/C++, Forth etc.)? What is sought is a
>> process that can be replicated by anyone proficient in the imperative
>> environment.
>
> Why waste time using crappy tools. We already have working Smalltalk
> systems. It would be as silly as me replicating the work where I manually
> created stub images for testing back in 1987.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Fractured Idiom:- MERCI RIEN - Thanks for nothin'.
>


-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.



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