On 14 févr. 04, at 09:05, Avi Bryant wrote:

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> On Feb 13, 2004, at 11:56 PM, ducasse wrote:
>
>> I see.
>> Ginsu has that and it would be good to be able to have that too. I 
>> think that KCP is cleaning the run-time while
>> what we need in that case is real package holding definition objects 
>> which lazzily forward to run-time entities where they are there
>> (as in Ginsu). So I would suggest to make package not only a facade 
>> for the system but introduce real objects.
>> This also means that we need a browser that manipulates these 
>> entities (as in Ginsu). But we could esaily said that class 
>> categories have been promoted first class objects = Package.
>>
>> If you have another solution propose one. I would like to know how we 
>> could do that otherwise (ie without compromising the
>> current run-time semantics and in this elegant way). I really think 
>> that the semantics model as in ginsu is simple, obvious and nice.
>
> I think it would be simpler to just extend/rewrite SystemOrganization 
> and ClassOrganization to do what we need (or introduce a new 
> organization scheme in parallel).

Yes this is another possibility. we can always as a large table with 
data/annotations on other entities.
But this means that tools will have to be adapted anyway. So at the end 
I think the cleanest way is to have other entities.
The idea with Ginsu is that you could have different version of the 
same class loaded in parallel and other. I think that joseph would be 
better to answer this question that I the morning.

>  I don't see the use cases for which it would be useful to keep the 
> actual definition objects around, but maybe you can enlighten me...
This is also a way to have a clear separation between run-time entities 
and declarations. This way you can code in Squeak code for
Squat or another Smalltalk.
This was what they did at Digitalk and I think that they were right. At 
least they had the manpower to think and do it.
Have a look at the page of allen wirfs-brock.

Stef

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