On Mon, 1 Feb 2016, Chris Muller 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...
>>>
>>
>> You'd also have to move their superclass hierarchy,
>
> Of course.  That was implied.
>
>> so that wouldn't really
>> work.
>
> Why not?

Because that would mean moving at least 20% of the classes of the 
Collections package.

>
>> There's no need to have a single "kernel" package containing all essential
>> classes, so IMHO it's better to have many kernel packages.
>
> "Many kernel packages" is what we have now.  So what are we talking

No, we don't. We have some packages with mixed roles. Instead of moving 
the kernel-related collection classes from Colletions to Kernel, you could 
just create a new package, e.g. Kernel-Collections, which would contain 
these.
Such smaller packages can greatly simplify the dependencies between 
packages.

Levente

> about then?  Just moving things around to different packages based on
> some "improved" notion of subjective semantic classification, with no
> regard for the physical system dependencies?  Why would that be
> beneficial?
>
> Are Symbols part of any Smalltalk's Kernel?  Yes, so what benefit is
> it to have it in Collections?
>
> Is LRUCache part of any Smalltalk's Kernel?  No, but if its in
> Collections along with Symbol, then I'm forced to remove it manually
> after loading "many kernel packages" if I just want a Kernel system...
>