Hi all,

So I've been plugging away at Environments, and have a new implementation that supports renaming, but I wanted to get some feedback before figuring out the sequence of commits necessary to update the trunk safely.

The idea is to support this kind of scenario:

seaside := (Environment named: #Seaside)

import: Smalltalk globals;
importSelf;
exportSelf;
yourself.

magma := (Environment named: #Magma)
import: Smalltalk globals;

importSelf;
exportSelf;
yourself.

app := (Environment named: #AwesomeApp)

import: Smalltalk globals;
import: seaside;

from: seaside import: {#Session -> #SeasideSession};
import: magma;

from: magma import: {#Session -> #MagmaSession};
importSelf;

exportSelf;
yourself.

In order to have the decompiled code use the correct names, I've changed the way lookup works. Instead of moving bindings from one environment to another, we now create a separate set of bindings for each environment, and copy the values (i.e., classes and globals) into a new binding when a binding is imported.

I had originally thought to use something like #changed:/#update: to keep all the bindings in sync, but then I realized that ClassBuilder does a #becomeForward: updates a class. So it's really only globals that could become out of sync between environments. Since we have very few globals in the image, and they basically never change, an update mechanism may not be necessary in practice.

So, here are some possible ways to proceed:

1. Use #changed:/#update: or something similar to keep keep global variables in sync.

2. Idea from Eliot—adopt the same convention as VW, and send #value to the binding on every access. Then we could have a special Alias bindings that forward the #value message to the original binding.

3. Share bindings for global variables between environments and disallow renaming of globals.

4. Special case the traditional globals such as Transcript and Display, and disallow the creation of new globals.

Anyhow, I'd appreciate a code review from anybody who's interested in this stuff. To take a look, file the attached (hand edited) change set into an updated trunk image.

Thanks,

Colin