Lex Spoon wrote:

> (Also, I wonder whether this is a real problem even on Windows.  The DLL
> problems I've heard of involve *system* DLL's like graphics and network
> drivers, but Squeak's plugins are for Squeak only.  Is there no way to
> ensure that Squeak's plugins will stay separate from those of the rest
> of the system?  If nothing else, they could all have a prefix on their
> name....)

I'm not a windows user anymore so I'm not a reliable witness, but this does sound
like a real part of the problem.  IF windows can have dlls anywhere other than
the windows/system/ (or whatever it's called these days) then we ought to be able
to simply sidestep the problem that the Apple quote mentions. Keep our dlls in a
private directory, alongside the vm. We already have in place the version
checking to (help) avoid many of the other problems M$ has with dlls.

Who knows about the resource stuff on Windows? I suspect you can do a lot with
that in terms of bundling stuff up. At one stage VW for Windows could have the
image file in the resources for example. And I know you can conceptually
maniulate the resources, since I wrote code to change the splash screen resouce
for VW2.0.
So, if it can still be done, you could have all the plugins, image, changes &
sources in there. Saving the image would save the image and changes seperately
(maybe it might help to make them a bundled up file somehow?) without messing up
the default image. It would presumably be possible to extract and replace a
plugin if needed, something possibly useful as an automagic update job.

And probably the same on Mac. So we have not twenty, not four, not even two, but
just one file.

tim