On 29-Jun-08, at 9:48 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
No. You need a C compiler, true, but it builds the next C compiler from text sources only, it does not clone itself.
This is also the difference between using SystemTracer to clone an image into a new format vs. what Ralph suggested, using an image to assemble a new image from scratch, containing only an explicitly defined set of objects.
This turns to not be the case. I did not suggest using the tracer to clone an image into a new format; I suggested building a clump of new objects in an existing image's memory and then tracing out that clump only. How would one separate this from the operation of a typical C compiler; read source, generate stuff into memory, write it out.
But it really doesn't matter. Nothing we can do will stop some people from making pointless objections and raising a ruckus. They just don't like Smalltalk.
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.