[Vm-dev] Re: [squeak-dev] Re: Some notes about SqueakMap dead in trunk images...

Chris Muller ma.chris.m at gmail.com
Wed Mar 24 15:14:34 UTC 2010


Hi Göran,

> How much code would that "add" to the image?

Umm, it looks like Ma object serialization itself is about 600
methods, and the other pre-req packages would add another 700 or so
methods.  No changes are made to the base system, of course, and you
only have to deal with about 2 or 3 methods of API.  So I think this
has little bearing on anything real for humans (unlike a
non-functional SM, which does); not space, not performance, not
maintainability.  So I do have trouble to understand people's
obsession with this particular metric, but that's another story.

> The short term fix is of course to use a different kind of serialization,
> and hey, perhaps a SmartRefStream works? I haven't had the time to try.

It probably would, and that would be the first thing to try.  Like Ma
object serialization, you would have just 2 or 3 methods max to deal
with, API-wise.  But it might suffer the same risk of
compatibility-issues across all current + future Squeak versions
because it is a physical, not logical, serialization.

> Andreas did a small XML hack a while back, and any kind of serialization
> works as a short term fix. The "only" problem is how to make sure
> other/older images works too - at least back to 3.8.

I agree.

> Yeah, and I really would like to move to a different model altogether. A
> model which is more distributed. But that is a different story than fixing
> SqueakMap for 4.1.

I really like off-line cache it has already.  I just hope we can get
SM working for the trunk image.



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