Henrik Gedenryd <Henrik.Gedenryd at lucs.lu.se>  wrote...

>So what we need next is to figure out just what would go into such a
>solution. If you recall my posting "[Modules] Let's get things rolling
>soon", much of it applies to this question. The idea was to put out
>something soon that contains just precisely what has to be there at first,
>and then collectively build from there.
>
>I have been hacking up a Modules prototype derived from Dan's Environments,
>and after thinking just a little about just what would go into your
>lightweight scheme, and with the KISS approach I took, I don't think they
>are very far apart.

I'm with Andreas.  "It's simple.  I like it".

Your code provides a pretty minimal structure with which to factor the Squeak image into modules.  This gives us an opportunity to play around a bit before moving to strong modules in the Squeak release.

It seems to me, after a bit of critique and possible further tweaks to usability, we could put something very close to this code into the system, and set up a default (non-invasive in Les's sense) partitioning of Squeak into modules.

This would in turn, as I wrote earlier, enable us to work on...

>	A good factoring of the monolithic image
>
>	Enhancing our tools to work with modules
>
>	Shrink methods that really work
>	(think of this as unloading weak modules ;-)
>
>	Various approaches for strong modules

in addition to...

	A related component model for projects.

Work on these parallel projects would surely feed back onto the basic module design so it would quickly become a solid and mature architecture.

So I think it would be great to try this out in the image, and start some of the side projects with it.  What do other people think about this as a starting structure?

I would be especially interested at this point to hear from Les, Hans-Martin, and Joseph, regarding whether such a target structure in the image could work reasonably with their existing bodies of code, or whether we should be considering a different kernel or at least some changes to this one.

	- Dan
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