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0 pointsRochus3y ago0 comments

It is true, that there is uncollected garbage in the original Xerox ST80 image. I've built some tools to analyze the image and also a VM which can be interrupted at any time to analyze the current state of the image (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/Smalltalk).

There are two zombie processes (OID 6662 and 19ba). There are also a couple of BlockContext and MethodContext which have a nil sender and a reference to an unknown method, but which are still referenced from somewhere (i.e. the collection is prevented, even with mark & sweep). E.g. OID 79a2 of class BinaryChoice. I have a full list if anybody is interested.

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floren3y ago

It's things like this that always made me look a bit askance at Smalltalk. It feels a little like "Document_Final_FINAL_v3_(2).docx", a little like a dirty old whiteboard where you can still see outlines of notes from last year. Might not be a fair assessment, but as an outsider I've always felt this way about image-based systems.

RochusOP3y ago

Deploying an application was always an adventure. You could never be completely sure that it didn't contain things it shouldn't.

igouy3y ago

( cont. from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31999774 )

> … no algorithm that can identify all dead code reliably…

Why were you so concerned with the removal of all dead code?

Compared to "… nobody had the source code…" it seems like a minor issue.

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igouy3y ago

For some meaning of "contain things it shouldn't":

Given that the base image we started working with didn't "contain things it shouldn't" why could we not be completely sure that base image + source code fileIn didn't "contain things it shouldn't" ?

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igouy3y ago

Is there uncollected garbage in the Smalltalk Squeak 6.0 image?

RochusOP3y ago

I have no information about this. Squeak uses a different image format, incompatible with my tools.

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