Dale,
I'm not sure if this is part of your idea, but would it be cool if you
could build this as a virtual file interface so that a Smalltalk image could
be mounted and searched using unix tools? Sort of like your idea
inside-out.
Eliot
On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Dale Henrichs <[email protected]> wrote:
> I was thinking about a number of things in the shower this morning and then
> it occurred to me that it would be interesting to create a shell environment
> INSIDE a Smalltalk vm.
>
> It wouldn't be a complete environment, but it would include a small set of
> standard unix utilities:
>
> - awk
> - sed
> - grep
>
> the "directory structure" would be the package structure in the image (or
> maybe multiple views on the image contents) with the basic idea that you
> 'cd' into a class where there is a 'file' that contains the class
> attributes. you then 'cd instance/all' and you are in a "directory" of
> methods where you can 'vi at:put:' and have a vi-like editor come up on the
> source of the at:put: method of course awk, grep, and sed work on all of
> these 'source files'... there would be 'executable files' that are simply
> workspaces ...
>
> I know that folks have externalized files, but I don't know if anyone has
> internalized the shell environment ...
>
> The reason for internalizing the shell is that it becomes easy to
> transition to the debugger and other traditional browsers/windows.
>
> The big reason for internalizing the shell is to provide a unix-like
> interface for Smalltalk that might make transition to the Smalltalk tools
> easier for folks new to Smalltalk.
>
> The secondary reason (and probably just as important) for internalizing the
> shell, is that the hard-core Smalltalk developers might actually find some
> utility in using the "smalltalk shell" in the normal course of development
> and if hard-core developers use it, it will be maintained and might lead to
> other interesting things...
>
> The idea is that the entire "smalltalk shell" would be implemented in
> Smalltalk so you could bring up browsers with a command ...
>
> I've been thinking wistfully back to the days when I lived inside of Emacs
> in the days before every terminal had a mouse ... back then I put my hands
> on the keyboard at the start of the day and they stayed there the entire day
> all window navigation was done via the keyboard ... I lost all of that once
> I started doing development in Smalltalk...
>
> Anyway that about covers todays "ideas from the shower"...
>
> Dale
>
>
