[Cuis-dev] [RFC] Namespaces, changes to SystemDictionary, Object and a dictionary class for tracking environment implementations

[Juan Vuletich]

On 10/7/2020 3:19 AM, Gerald Klix via Cuis-dev wrote:
> On 2020-10-06 21:29, ken.dickey at whidbey.com wrote:
>> On 2020-10-06 08:52, Gerald Klix wrote:
>>
>>> Please bear with me until I can provide a simple example
>>> implementation that handles environments.
>>
>> Gerald,
>>
>> Thanks much for this quick response.
>>
>> I am not the world's brightest light, so sometimes it takes me a 
>> while to get things.
>>
>> Also, apologies for not yet completing my PackageEnvironments 
>> proposal. You are motivating me to get back to it.
>>
>> With so many ways to implement Namespaces/Environments, it is good to 
>> have a number of concrete implementations to explore to find/get the 
>> best outcomes.
>>
>> I am very much looking forward to the fruits of your efforts!
>>
>> Good on ya,
>> -KenD
>>
>
> Good Morning Ken,
>
> Mentioning your PackageEnvironments approach motivates me to try again 
> explaining ths
> EnvironmentImplementationsDictionary thing:
>
> Suppose we have two packages (or set of packages) that implement 
> environments.
> One is your "package environments (PS) implementation", the other one 
> a simple environment implementation (SE).
> Both implementations should provide
> a so called environment manager singleton,
> that manages their implementation's environments. These managers 
> should be registered with the EnvironmentImplementationsDictionary 
> singleton.
> Of course both must implement the protocol
> demanded by this class.
> This way two our more environment implementations can coexist in one 
> Cuis image.
>
> I tried to implement Juan's (soft) requirement:
> "
> Yes. I want Cuis to be a good place for doing any kinds of 
> experiments. Adding hooks for optional pluggable behavior is a big 
> part of that."
>
> You can look at
> https://gitlab.com/klgcuisstuff/environments/-/blob/master/EnvironmentsBase.pck.st 
>
>
> and
>
> https://gitlab.com/klgcuisstuff/environments/-/blob/master/SimpleEnvironments.pck.st 
>
>
> to get the details.
> Please don't file these packages in, they are
> currently broken.
>
>
> HTH and Best Regards,
>
> Gerald

If this implies the base image (and people using it) to be aware of many 
possible implementations of environments, and include the complexity 
required to make them work smoothly together, then this sounds like too 
much to me.

If this is really required, maybe it should go into a 
MultiEnvironmentsImplementationsSupport.pck.st, or such. Maybe people 
working on varios implementations of Environments could get together to 
work on this package. And please, make it require as little as possible 
from the base image. A few methods delegating to (most likely absent) 
optional service is ok. Knowledge of all the complexity of 
MultiEnvironmentsImplementationsSupport.pck.st in the base image, is not.

Thanks,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
www.cuis-smalltalk.org
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
https://github.com/jvuletich
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
@JuanVuletich