On 30 Apr 2019, at 0:15, Keith wrote:

Years ago I was trying to rationalise all the various functionality of Smalltalk/SmalltalkImage across
forks. I also wanted to support a scheme that would handle being bootstrapped from sources.

i.e. the startup process may load in or unload a number of classes from sources at an early stage, and when the time came to think about #startUp they may not have been #initialised, (the #startUp might be their initialisation).

So I vaguely recollect that when I had a go at re-doing the startuplist I removed this responsibility to a class of its own, called StartupManager, and removed the class var that holds the list in favour of a voting system.

I found some code hiding away (somewhat obfuscated)

https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~keithy/cuis/System-Support_StartupManager/revision/1#StartupManager-into-Cuis2/1-System-Support-StartupManager.install/0002/StartupManager-(startup-shutdown)-int.1.st

Looking through the comments I find

StatupManager

New simple startUp shutDown protocol

classes implement #startUpPriority #shutDownPriority to register.
Note: this code could be hosted on a different class, such as SmalltalkImage,

The startUp and shutdownLists are compiled by looking at all implementors of:'
#startUpPriority and #shutDownPriority'
Priorities are: #first #earliest #earlier #early #normal #late #later #latest #last'

As you can imagine this was very much a first attempt at resolving these problems.

Keith

One of the other goals was to support removable/loadable UI in the bootstrap process

I found this code in there, which indicates that the vote was essentially on a numeric 0-999 scale.

StartupManager class methodsFor: 'system-startup-shutdown' stamp: 'kph 2/4/2010 16:44'!"

priorities

^ IdentityDictionary new

at: #first put: 0; "reserved for Delay"
at: #earliest put: 10;
at: #earlier put: 100;
at: #early put: 200;
at: #normal put: 500;
at: #late put: 800;
at: #later put: 900;
at: #latest put: 990;
at: #last put: 999; "reserved for Delay"
yourself.

and some code, sorting on given priority value, followed by class name.

startUpList

| priorities list |

priorities := self class priorities.
list := SortedCollection sortBlock: [ :a :b |
a value = b value
ifFalse: [ a value <= b value]
ifTrue: [ a key name <= b key name ] ].'

self systemNavigation allClassesRespondingTo: #startUpPriority
do: [ :cl | list add: (cl -> (priorities at: cl startUpPriority ifAbsent: [ cl startUpPriority ] )) ].

^ list