Note that Smallapack passes all arguments into a single array.
Eliot Miranda suggested to pass first 14 arguments as usual, and only
the last+excess arguments into an array, but nobody did work on such
implementation. I do not remember pros and cons either, need to
various scan mailing lists (squeak or vm-dev ?)...

Le ven. 9 avr. 2021 à 16:01, Nicolas Cellier
<nicolas.cellier.aka.nice at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> You can see a workaround at http://www.squeaksource.com/Smallapack.html
> See package
>
> Smallapack-Compiler.trunk-nice.6.mcz
>
> Le ven. 9 avr. 2021 à 13:28, Stephan Lutz <dev at stlutz.net> a écrit :
> >
> > At the moment methods are limited to 15 arguments at most.
> >
> > Trying to compile a method with more arguments fails:
> >
> > with: arg1 with: arg2 with: arg3 with: arg4 with: arg5 with: arg6 with: arg7 with: arg8 with: arg9 with: arg10 with: arg11 with: arg12 with: arg13 with: arg14 with: arg15 with:  "Too many arguments ->"arg16
> >
> >     ^ 42
> >
> > This limitation is enforced in Encoder >> bindArg:
> >
> > bindArg: name
> >     "Declare an argument."
> >     | node |
> >     nTemps >= 15
> >         ifTrue: [^self notify: 'Too many arguments'].
> >     node := self bindTemp: name.
> >     ^ node nowHasDef nowHasRef
> >
> > Looking at where this limitation comes from, I noticed that a method header only has 4 bits reserved for the number of arguments:
> >
> > header
> >     "Answer the word containing the information about the form of the
> >      receiver and the form of the context needed to run the receiver.
> >
> >         sign:1 29-28:accessModifier 27-24:numArgs 23-18:numTemps 17:largeFrameFlag 16:hasPrimitive 15:isOptimized 14-0:numLits"
> >
> >     ^self objectAt: 1
> >
> > This, however, only uses 32 bits in total. In a 64bit image, the other 32 bits seem to be unused.
> >
> > Question: Is the limit of 15 arguments still accurate on modern VMs & bytecode sets?
> >
> > Stephan
> >
> >
> > Disclaimer: No, I do not want to pass every single pixel of my bitmap as an argument ^^. But apparently other people's C-style libraries do, and I need to interface with one through FFI. Yes, I could build and invoke ExternalFunctions manually, but I would reeeaaally prefer not to if given a choice.
> >
> >