On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 10:20 AM, Nicolas Cellier <
nicolas.cellier.aka.nice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2011/12/2 Martin Dias <tinchodias at gmail.com>:
> > Hi folks
> >
> > In Fuel, we serialize a block closure with its state, including its
> > outerContext. This enables to serialize a sorted collection with its
> > sortBlock:
> >
> > | bytes result |
> > bytes := FLSerializer serializeToByteArray: (SortedCollection sortBlock:
> [:a
> > :b | a > b ]).
> > result := FLMaterializer materializeFromByteArray: bytes.
> > result
> > addAll: #(1 2 3);
> > yourself.
> > ---> a SortedCollection(3 2 1)
> >
> > Here the problem: the byte array is huge! (800kb) because we are
> serializing
> > unneeded context for the sort block.
> >
> > We wonder how to prune it and save time and space.
> >
> > Thanks in advance
> > Martín
>
> In the case of such clean block, there is no need of outer context
> during block execution.
> However I don't know if implementation makes it possible to ignore the
> context...
> That's more a question directed to Eliot ;)
>

Arguably there is a bug in my closure implementation, which is that both
the receiver and the method are fetched from the outerContext.  That's not
a bug which can be fixed without a new VM/image combination and may be
something I'll look at long-term, but is something we have to live with at
the moment.  This means that you *do* have to serialize the outerContext.
 But the outerContext is used only for the receiver and method.  So you
don't need to full serialize the outerContext.  In particular you don't
need to serialize any of the outerContext's stack contents or its sender.
 This needs special handling, I guess in BlockClosure, to substitute a
suitably reduced outerContext, but it shouldn't be hard to do.  e.g.

BlockClosure methods for: '*Fuel-serialization'
outerContextForSerialization
^MethodContext
sender: nil
receiver outerContext receiver
method: outerContext method
args: #()


BlockClosure methods for: '*Fuel-serialization'
outerContextForSerialization
^MethodContext
sender: nil
receiver self receiver
method: self method
args: #()



> Nicolas
>
>


-- 
best,
Eliot
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