On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Craig Latta craig@netjam.org wrote:
You should ask John, but the aim was to get a minimal Hello World so there isn't a compiler for example. But surely the answer is "whatever you need to get what you want done", right?
Heh, sure... but you're not answering my question. :) I'm wondering
how others have gone about deriving the complete set of classes and methods a system needs to perform a particular task (so that I can compare to how I do it). Indeed, I should ask John.
Ah, well the way John does it in MicroSqueak is that one can run whatever the expression one wants the new image to evaluate in the simulation hierarchy MObject. So one can experiment. There are limitations as I mentioned (one is using the host system's Booleans and Numbers, and Array from brace cinstructs, and Message from doesNotUnderstand:) and one still has to figure out what needs to be in the specialObjectsArray. But as far as what "main" does one can test that.
So if the goal is a microkernel from which one can bootstrap an image
one needs a compiler, a file system interface, and for sanity a minimal error-reporting framework right?
Sure, but that doesn't help much with questions like "Should I include
method X or not?". The necessity of several things in the system is rather subtle. :) I like to be able to point to any byte in an object memory and give a simple explanation as to why it's there, and have performed a straightforward process to get that explanation.
Right. The simulation of "main" (plus your coverage tool?) answers that.
-C
-- Craig Latta www.netjam.org next show: 2009-03-13 (www.thishere.org)