[VM] Build report and queries (Unix and Win32)

Andreas Raab Andreas.Raab at gmx.de
Wed Feb 20 22:59:54 UTC 2002


Lex,

> It's kind of interesting how different platforms are affected by this.
> Old Unix VM's are perfectly fine with these images, because they just
> obediently pass on the requested image file to the 
> platform-independent portion of Squeak.  The Windows VM's (and maybe
> the Mac VM's?) try to do some sanity checking to protect the
> user from Bad Catastrophic Horrible Bad Things that they couldn't
> possibly want,

Actually no. What you're seeing is a side effect of an entirely
different feature - namely that of being able to start Squeak just by
double clicking on the executable or dropping some project file or
whatever onto it. In order for this to work, the VM checks if the thing
you're passing in is a Squeak image file and if not, tries to find one
on its own. 

> and end up being a tiny bit too restrictive. Instead of fixing the
sanity
> check, it would be possible to just *remove* the check, but I don't
remember
> anyone proposing that kind of solution.

For good reasons. Many (most?) Windows people are used to start
applications and therefore, if there is a Squeak.exe they will try to
start it and if it dies for no good reason or gives questionable
responses (like popping up dialog boxes etc) you've just lost a possible
user.

Cheers,
  - Andreas





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