some more questions

[Chris Muller]

> Hello,

Hi!

> I have some more questions about Magma. The first one is, about
> objects
> which can be stored. Here http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5722 is
> written, that any subclasses of Set and Dictionary are not supported
> and
> they are not expected to work. Why?

The reason for this is Magma's solution to an issue with using Sets or
Dictionarys in GOODS that was well-articulated by Adrian Lienhard:

 
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-July/079600.html

Magma's solution is to serialize Sets and Dictionary's in their
*logical* format, not their physical.  This is absolutely essential to
maintain transparency with respect to existing object models, such as
Morph's.

The caveat is that all subclasses of Set or Dictionary which add
additional variables, the additional variables do not get saved because
the serialization overrides, inherited by the subclass, only enumerate
the contents of the Set or Dictionary (i.e., using #do:).

This is very fixable, just a bit tedious and I haven't had the time to
do it yet.

> Does it mean, if I subclass a
> Dictionary, I will not be able to save it in Magma?

You probably wouldn't have any issues if there is no additional state
defined in the subclasses; otherwise that additional state won't get
saved/restored.

> My second question is about about the time required to load Magma
> into
> my image. This is probably more a problem to be addressed to the
> squeak-dev list. When I load Magma into fresh 3.8 image, it is pretty
> fast, under 2 minutes. When I do the same in 3.9, it takes ages. It
> happens with many other packages loaded from Monticello.

I have not yet ventured to 3.9 so I have no idea, sorry.  Magma is
certainly not supported in 3.9 yet and I would be pleasantly surprised
if it could pass its test cases in 3.9.

> Third, is this list going to be archived by Gmane? I prefer it over
> mailing, as I can easily look up things in older posts.
> gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak.magma contains only information
> about
> moving the list to mailman and there are no old messages and new are
> not
> recorded.

Yes, that's the plan.  I sent an email to the gmane guys last Saturday
requesting they resubscribe our entry to the new mailman list but I
haven't heard back.  I'll look into it.

 - Chris