Since the recent discussions on making Squeak more modular, I've  
been pondering some of the same sorts of issues, so if you receive  
any information that isn't sent to the mailing list, I'd love to see  
it.  Also, what book did you read on modile objects, and was it good?  
 Thanks.

> I have been reading a book on mobile objects, and some of the  
limitations of
> the technique. It made me wonder about how Squeak and Smalltalk  
deal with
> these issues (rather better I suspect). Firstly, Java will not  
allow threads
> to be serialized. Is the same true of Processes in Squeak? Can these be 
> saved and restored to their execution state in a different image?  
This is
> important for the idea of mobile software agents. The reason this is 
> probably difficult in Java is because it uses native threads.
>
> Secondly, with passing objects from one image to another. Passing  
the state
> seems fairly straightforward, but what about behaviour? If an  
Instance of
> class Dog is shipped to a remote Image that does not have this  
class, what
> happens? In Java, a classLoader fixes the problem. In Smalltalk, I'm 
> guessing you can just pass the class across the net to add the  
behaviour
> (shows that making a class an object was an excellent design  
decision). Is
> this the case, or is more needed? Does SmartReferenceStream deal  
with this
> automatically, or must you explicitly add the class to the remote  
image?
>
> How are dependencies dealt with in serialization? I think with BOSS it 
> streams the object and all of its references to other objects etc.  
Does the
> same happen when an object is serialized on the net in Squeak?
>
> These are probably very basic questions, but I would like to know  
how Squeak
> handles these things...
>
>
> Peter
>