[squeak-dev] One year on, how do you feel about your "Squeak 2010-ish" post?

Tony Garnock-Jones tonyg at lshift.net
Thu Feb 25 21:33:10 UTC 2010


Hi David,

David J. Goehrig wrote:
> Squeakers, Squeakians, Squeakites, and Squeakods,
> Allow me to mark the end of 2008 by sharing with you a little story
> and a wish list for 2010.

How do you feel about your message now, one year later? I am interested
in pretty much all of the things you discuss in the message: in
particular, in gaining a clearer understanding of the interaction
between a hosting and the hosted system: the VM and image, if you like,
or recursively, processes in the image and the InterpreterSimulator'd
subimage.

> 1.) Primatives can not be added to the VM on the fly, by just
assembling some code and running it.

This is the only one of your list that's low-hanging fruit, really, if
you don't mind poking at the VM sources a bit that is. A primitive for
getting the system to set %eip (%rip) to the start of a given ByteArray
would do the trick ;-)

Perhaps Alien will help here?

> 1.) I can't test new hardware in a running squeak image
> 2.) I can't load and unload applications, without affecting the underlying system
> 3.) I can't load and unload multiple versions of a "module" without substantial hackery
> 4.) I can't run 2 of the same process at once, and be sure that they don't affect eachother's internal state
> 5.) I can't extend the interface procedurally, without risking breaking my debugger!
> 6.) I can't test multiple versions of my code base against the same set of live objects!

These, to me, are (still) *excellent* requirements for a Smalltalk of
the Future!

Regards,
  Tony



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