Re: [Help-smalltalk] Including files

[Mike Anderson]

Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
>>> How would this know about a filepath specified on the command line,
>>> for example?  (see gst_smalltalk_args and process_file in lib.c)
>>>     
>>
>> It wouldn't.
> 
> The obvious solution being to call FileStream>>#fileIn: there too.  We
> only need to use process_file to bootstrap the system, everything else
> had better be done with Smalltalk call-ins.  We're actually doing this
> more often in post-2.2 development versions, to allow filing in a
> ReadStream.
> 
>> I'm afraid I'm having difficulty coming to grips with the
>> recent fad for doing everything outside of Smalltalk.
>>   
> 
> ???

What I was trying to say is that lately it seems everyone has been
focussing on better ways of writing Smalltalk from outside of Smalltalk,
whereas I'm more interested in finding ways of doing the tasks from
within Smalltalk. What you've suggested there is exactly that, so that
makes me happy.

To digress slightly: what I've been daydreaming about is having the
Read-Eval-Print loop implemented in a Smalltalk process. That way, you
could substitute another method of interaction (like, say, something
listening on a port), kill the REP, and restart the image with the new
interface only. At the moment, you have to supply a script to the image
that will suspend the REP.

I'm increasingly thinking that a Smalltalk image is most similar to a
database instance. Rather than starting it up every time you want to run
something, you would run it in the background. Adding classes and
compiling methods have parallels in creating tables and stored
procedures. Queries translate into expression evaluations, but of
course, a Smalltalk image can provide the application as well as just
the back end.

Maybe I'm reinventing GemStone, but that's not Free Software, so I'd
never feel comfortable hacking on it.

Regards,

Mike