Duane Maxwell wrote:
Actually, while you're mucking around in there, I'd kinda like the ability to make the VM close external plugins in order to make the debugging on them easier. At the moment, to test a new version of a plugin, we have to quit and restart the VM.
It doesn't seem to be so easy to get rid of an already installed shared lib on Linux (don't know for other platforms): If I'm removing a plugin module while Squeak is running, a previously called function from this module is further available though. A file 'sync' doesn't change this behavior.
Therefore it seems to be necessary to browse all calls to e.g. a module like 'LargeIntegers' by searching for methods containing lines like <primitive: 'primDigitAddWith' module:'LargeIntegers'> by Smalltalk browseMethodsWithSourceString: '''LargeIntegers''' , and then?
Currently I don't know, how the cache mechanism for the function pointer works, which is also given as a parameter (in an array) to Interpreter>>primitiveExternalCall (look there)... It would be necessary to clear all these pointers in the whereever cache: then they would be recomputed automatically with next call of the corresponding function in a renewed module (at least I suppose this for Linux).
If a shared library could be closed and reopened from within the VM, you could do some really interesting stuff under certain enlightened platforms, such as translate, compile and test a plugin without ever leaving the Squeak environment. Under UNIX the external stuff could be done with a plugin that calls "system()", on the Mac this could be done with the AppleScript plugin and CodeWarrior.
This would be very neat. I think one challenge is to ensure same semantics on all platforms...
Stephan