I am interested by binary loading. It can help to attract more developer as it makes life more efficient for those like me willing to write/extend etoys with additional application like Dr Geo[1] without the need to fork

Hilaire

[1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/DrGeo

2009/7/30 Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel@merlintec.com:

Andreas Raab wrote:

...

Bert Freudenberg wrote:

...

Basically we want to deploy a Squeak application, without shipping a custom image. I think that's a new problem, typically Smalltalk apps ship as customized images.

Funny you should mention that. This is something I am actually working on in my spare time. I do have the outline for a Squeak application bundle that stores binary representations of code (so that the image does not require a Compiler; in fact I want to be able to use that to load one ;-) and optionally, source code. It's nicely small and fast so far (the entirety of Morphic goes into 700k and takes less than a second to load) but the work's only just started so there is a long ways to go here. If someone is seriously interesting in this direction, drop me a note.

This is my number one priority for the second half of 2009. I won't be able to start working on it until late August or September, but have a very brief explanation at http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5637

Earlier this year I had proposed a much simpler version of this (http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/584) which wouldn't have the complicated "swizzling" on load and save nor the multiple viewpoints and new concurrency model. The focus was exactly on fast binary loading and what I thought I could get the Squeak community to agree with as a next step.

Since I was unable to get any interest in the "Squeak friendly" proposal, I decided I might as well go with the more radical design instead. This will involve a significant rewrite of ObjectMemory with an organization using segments (like Self) and fragmented object tables (like "handles" in early Mac software) which I hope will be equally useful for small and large (64 bit) memories.

-- Jecel

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