On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 5:51 PM, Craig Latta <craig@netjam.org> wrote:

Hi Eliot--

> > How did [John Maloney] know which classes were necessary for [a] new
> > [MicroSqueak] image?
>
> There is a hierarchy rooted at MObject, all of which becomes the new
> classes in the new image. The generator renames the classes so that
> in the generated image MObject is called Object and so on for all
> subclasses.

Right, but how did he know which classes should be in that hierarchy? I.e., how did he decide what was essential and what wasn't?

You should ask John, but the aim was to get a minimal Hello World so there isn't a compiler for example. But surely the answer is "whatever you need to get what you want done", right? So if the goal is a microkernel from which one can bootstrap an image one needs a compiler, a file system interface, and for sanity a minimal error-reporting framework right?

-C

--
Craig Latta
www.netjam.org
next show: 2009-03-13 (www.thishere.org)