On Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:10:48 +0200, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:

...
> I can understand why someone may not wish to go so far into the past  
> that they
> cross the point of singularity (when the first image came into  
> existence).

Odds are that you will never achieve this: take an arbitrary computer  
system, with nothing on disk and nothing in memory after power on. You're  
allowed to choose one with the most convenient instruction set ever  
created on this our planet.

Your job: boot a compiler with which every program, which until then was  
not compiled by the compiler, is to be replaced (so that the pre-compiler  
area things can be eliminated).

Many/most of the historical records of the "pre-replacement" things are  
not available, for various reasons in the previous century, often because  
of the competive edge of enterprises and individuals.

That's the nature of the exercise, be it for an .image or whatsover.

/Klaus

> But the knowledge about how to create the primordial soup should not be  
> lost
> into oblivion. SystemTracer can be a source but should not be the only
> source.
>
> Smalltalk is compact (and powerful) because of consistent and repeated
> applications of few powerful patterns; just like Nature. My interest got
> piqued because if the primal image is so complex that it requires jiggery
> pokery perhaps it is time to apply Occam's razor to it. Transmutation  
> (aka
> bootstrapping) from one type of system into Smalltalk should not be so
> complex that SystemTracer remains only source of information even after  
> nine
> years. A google count of 492 after nine years of SystemTracer is
> disconcerting. What patters have we missed out here?
>
> BTW, I meant imperative *environments* (OS platforms like Linux, Unix or
> Windows). The image itself can be declarative.
>
> Subbu
>
>