Hi Max, On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 1:43 AM, Max Leske <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On 06 Dec 2014, at 04:37, Eliot Miranda <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 11:35 PM, Max Leske <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> > On 05 Dec 2014, at 08:02, Norbert Hartl <[email protected]> wrote: >> > >> > >> > >> > >> >> Am 04.12.2014 um 23:31 schrieb Thierry Goubier < >> [email protected]>: >> >> >> >> Hi all, >> >> >> >> I'm just wondering. >> >> >> >> Would it work to have a package format based on Fuel? >> >> >> > I doubt it would work cross platform. I don't know how fuel serializes >> WideString, LargePositiveInteger, BoxedFloat64. These differ between >> smalltalk platforms. The source as string solves that. Strings are written >> as unicode string and numbers as certain number format etc. >> >> True. Cross dialect loading isn’t something we encourage to do with Fuel. >> >> @Thierry >> You said something about partial loading: that will never be possible >> with Fuel because of its pickle format. To select any partial graph you >> have to first read the entire file and rebuild the graph first (ok, you >> don’t strictly have to build the graph but you still need to read the >> entire file). >> > > Hi Max, you misunderstand what partial loading means in this context. I > designed and implemented partial loading for the Parcel system in VW, and > Fuel is essentially a clean reimplementation of parcels. The idea is that > one does indeed read the entire object graph, but then only the parts of > the graph that mate with the current class hierarchy are installed, and the > bits that don't fit are stored for later. Why? So that a component can > define extensions on classes in components that may not be present. Why? > So that one can maintain a single logical component in a single package > instead of decomposing it into independently loadable fragments. > > > Makes sense. It’s just that I often get asked if it is possible to read / > update only parts of a Fuel file, so I wanted to make it clear that that > can’t work. > Right, good point. But is there a use case? For example, in effect is there a difference between being able to patch a part of a Fuel file and loading that file into an image (possibly automatically), patching the object graph and saving a new version? Lets take an example like Fuel itself. This may have specialised > marshalling and unmarshalling extensions defined on may classes, some of > which may be to do with the GUI. If we have partial loading we can load > Fuel into a headless image. The extensions on the GUI classes will simply > not be installed, *until* we load the GUI. Hence Fuel does not have to be > decomposed every time we factor the system into subcomponents. Without > partial loading Fuel must be decomposed into a series of fragments so that > it can load that part that fits into the headless base, and we have to > manage teh dependency to ensure the fragment that loads against the GUI is > loaded when the GUI is loaded. Worse still, if we cut the GUI into two > (e.g. development vs deployment tools) we have to visit the Fuel GUI > component (and potentially many other component) and decompose it into two > pieces. In practice this is extremely costly to maintain, verging on > chaos. With partial loading things are simple. > > Perhaps I should have called it partial installation, but you get the > idea. > > > Thanks for the explanation. > > > >> > >> > Norbert >> > >> >> Would that make loading faster? >> >> >> >> Does it already exist? >> >> >> >> Thanks, >> >> >> >> Thierry >> > >> >> >> > > > -- > best, > Eliot > > > -- best, Eliot
