Tim Rowledge wrote:
>>It's frustrating sometimes
>>to do e.g. an update-from-server, or to start a long package 
>>installation, and then to not be able to continue my work while the load 
>>is progressing.
> 
> Yes, but. Imagine you're loading code and your work is to be editing
> code. What is going to happen if your loading and coding clash? What if
> the loading code needs to be done in some atomic manner (perhaps it
> affects how the text views you are typing in work) ?

Yes, I see your point - of course, that's a problem in general with a 
non-transactional system, but getting away from that means getting away 
from Smalltalk in general :-) so I'll leave that alone for now.

Could loading code that needs to do such atomic updates grab some kind 
of UI-mutex-like-thing *for itself* rather than having the mutex-a-like 
grabbed for it by the surrounding, invoking code?

> One could certainly make update loading occur in another thread (easily)
> but how would we make it safe? Can't think of a quick answer right now.

Yes indeed, tricky stuff.

Regards,
   Tony
-- 
  [][][] Tony Garnock-Jones  | Mob: +44 (0)7905 974 211
    [][] LShift Ltd          | Tel: +44 (0)20 7729 7060
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