> On Jan 31, 2016, at 12:49 PM, Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> I guess the distinction between “Kernel” and “System” isn’t quite clear to me.
>>>
>>> I guess, for me, Kernel contains those things that are essential to a
>>> running Smalltalk image. System contains stuff that's generally useful
>>> to most things - most, but not all.
>>
>> I've long thought that we'll eventually move Array, OrderedCollection,
>> Set and Dictionary to Kernel so that Collections could be unloaded...
>
> The inheritance relation won't let you do it.  Collection would have to be in Kernel and that's completely wrong.

Eliot, I just mentioned the concrete classes -- that all of their
dependencies (up the inheritance chain) would have to go too, was
implied.  I see nothing wrong with Collection being defined in Kernel.

> And one can't represent Smalltalk programs without at least Kernel Numbers & Collections cuz all literals are either numbers or collections.  So it is a pipe dream to be able to unload these.
>
> It might be nice to split Numbers into Numbers-Kernel and Numbers-TheRestOfTheCoreLibrary to distinguish between those numbers that can be literals and those that aren't,

Right!  I meant the same with Collections, of course.

> but then you'd have to add Numbers-Base to hold the superclasses of large and small integers and the floats up to and including Number.

No, just leave them in Numbers-Kernel.  What need is there to
distinguish between "Kernel" and "Base"?  I don't see any..

>  And of course similarly for Collections.  But it's pain for little  gain.  There are other levels of organization (such as implement its of #isLiteral) that make the finer grain structure visible.

I thought we were talking about identifying a minimal, "Kernel"
Smalltalk system.  My only comment was that Array, OC, Set and Dict,
and all of the dependencies (superclasses, etc.) would need to be part
of that.