Hi PhiHo--
Tim wrote:
Maybe it would be better to just abandon the current image lineage and jump ship to build this purely on top of Spoon?
and you responded:
Yeah, let's do that one. :)
I know you are seriously smiling here.
Yeah, let's do that one !!!
I don't know if you are serious enough to use your Spoon to scoop out from the release Squeak 3.9 the KernelImage pioneered by Pavel and post the system and instructions for reproducing it...
Yes, I'm completely serious; but, unlike what I'm making, I don't think Pavel's image is really a kernel (it's not minimal). I think it's great if his work shows a way to delineate particular subsystems, though.
In general, I think "stripping" is a losing strategy. There's only one strip that matters for making a basis artifact, and that's the one that gets to an absolutely minimal core. I hope no one has to do it again after I'm done. From then on, the system should be composed of modules which can just be told to unload. The modules should worry about handling the ramifications of their dependencies (asking for human intervention only when absolutely necessary). It should be possible to compose any desired system by loading modules into the minimal core.
As for the 3.9 image, that's just one of several sources of behavior that I plan to imprint onto the Spoon object memory. I plan to release Naiad for each one, so that people can imprint from them.
-C
p.s.
I'm on the verge of another milestone: I have successfully removed all references to SystemDictionary and its sole instance from the minimal object memory, and my remote browsing tools work without referring to them as well. I'm about to remove them.