<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">Colin Putney wrote:</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">>So far, though, nobody has used those tools to do any untangling. <br>
>Note also that Dean's proposed path, which I've quoted above, <br>
>doesn't involve any rewriting or refactoring, only unloading.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">Please don't make too much of my comments. It was largely a</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">response to a comment from Andreas:</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">>What I called a pointless exercise is <br>
>to target an artifact with certain packages removed (a "mini" image) as <br>
>the goal instead of a process. The mini-images that we have are such <br>
>elaborate and -in terms of modularity- absolutely, completely, and <br>
>utterly pointless exercises since not a single person in the world <br>
>understands what needs to be done to get an image into such a "mini <br>
>state" again.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">I only meant to suggest that there may be a repeatable way to produce</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">a "mini" image with a certain set of functionality.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">I agree that this doesn't untangle anything.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">Since modularity and reuse are somewhat at odds with each other (much</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">like time and frequency, MIPS and memory usage, etc.) this raises the</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">question of what is a "good" balance between modularity and reuse?</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">Also, what constitutes a "minimal" image? I think there are almost</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">as many answers to this as there are users of Squeak.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">Do most people really care about modularity, or do they just want</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">a way to get a small artifact (i.e. image) for distribution?</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier New">I will stop before I get too far down another rat-hole.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier New"> -Dean</font>
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