Lothar Schenk <lothar.schenk at gmx.de> wrote:
> stéphane ducasse wrote:
> 
> > ...the idea was you have multiple Smalltalk
> > environments (difficult to express again)....
> 
> Mmm, that's something I've been idly speculating about. I don't know if this 
> holds up to the scrutiny of experts, but has anybody ever considered the 
> possibility of splitting up a Smalltalk system at the image level? It is, a 
> Smalltalk system should be comprised of multiple images, not just one.

Take a look at GemStone/S. Been around since 1985 IIRC. A
"distributed-multi-image-system" or a
"single-transactional-image-multiple-VMs-system" depending on how you
like to view it.

Really, really cool system. I think it is freely downloadable for
non-commercial use.

Also many efforts in the Squeak community have similar characteristica
and are in some ways inspired by GemStone - like say KATS from Stephen
Pair (an object transactional engine) or Magma from Chris Muller (a
simplified GemStone clone).

regards, Göran