On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Klaus D. Witzel
<klaus.witzel@cobss.com> wrote:
On Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:55:38 +0100, David Mitchell wrote:
KernalImage doesn't have a GUI.
Yes, this looks good. I would still prefer to go that little bit further and construct the core image from first principles, e.g. using John Maloney's MicroSqueak, as I described earlier in this thread. But Pavel's headless core looks to me to be functionally the right starting point. In any case it can be used to derive the other images while the first-principles bootstrap is being built (if it doesn't exist already).
Why go that "little bit further" and create the image from first principles? Repeatability. The the freedom to choose new object representations and bytecode sets, & hence Bootstrapping new languages like Newspeak is much easier. Hydra might benefit from pre-packaged minimal starting-points that can easily be tailored.
- http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-October/096111.html
It can load Monticello packages. He
has a script that will load in MorphicCore.
MorphicCore does (but has many bugs).
MorphicExt is more stable, but larger.
KernalImage is a Squeak image without any GUI. It has collections,
numbers, classes, the compiler, but little else. It has a text-based
UI that can evaluate Smalltalk expressions, and it can load files from
disk. Pavel has a fileIn for Monticello, so then you can load any
other package, as long as it doesn't have a GUI.
His other image is called MinimalMorphic. He has a Monticello package
for it, so you can load it from KernalImage. MinimalMorphic isn't
particularly minimal, but it has had some stuff (like eToys) removed
and I think he wants to remove more. It is a basic Morphic
environment, showing that you can separate MVC from Morphic.
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Eliot Miranda wrote:
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 7:44 AM, Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
On Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:35:49 +0100, Eliot Miranda wrote:
On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 1:17 AM, edgar De Cleene wrote:
> A standard "kernel image" that everyone builds
> off of has long
> been a pipe dream of nearly everyone in the community. I
> believe
> that such an image is not achievable in the short term;
> convincing all of the squeak distributions to adopt it
> would be
> nearly impossible to adopt incrementally.
>
Such image exist and is MorphicCore of Pavel Krivanek.
We should go towards this , removing packages from the top and reshaping
packages if packages as we know today can't be unloades/loaded nicely
Any image containing a GUI is a non-starter IMO. People may not want a
GUI
(e.g. the embedded and scripting folks). People may want a particular
GUI
(MVC, Morphic, Tweak, Newspeak, Croquet, one of the native GUIs) with no
vestiges of the old one. So the common image needs to be a small
headless
core that can bootstrap any image. This image needs minimal scripting
support to respond to command-line bootstrap commands (including
cross-platform stdin & stdout and a file interface), a compiler with
which
to compile code, collections, magnitudes, exceptions (as necessary), a
default error handler that dumps the stack to stdout and then aborts, and
that's about it.
All images derived from it should be derived by running scripts
(repeatable process).
Sure, and Pavel's has this all, and it's working, no wonder that Edgar
often mentions it:
- http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/ralph/blogView?entry=3342635112
If it doesn't have a GUI then why is it called MorphicCore??!
Reading from the blog entry it looks like it has eToys removed but not much
more.
Pavel, is it a headless image?
Klaus, if the image is not headless ten it doesn't meet my specification.
These scripts should be versioned.
Further, this initial image should be built from scratch, e.g. using John
Maloney's MicroSqueak as a starting point.
Interesting. Where is that one, search didn't show it:
- http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Maloney+MicroSqueak
[... much more good stuff cut away ...]
--
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it".
Albert Einstein