Hi Igor,

What about scanning for globals in the code? And just a proper way to declare globals somewhere in a package should be about enough (loading scripts can take care of the initialisation, no?).

Or... All globals are classes, or accessed via classes (singleton pattern). Like that you get everything correct (loading order, package ownership, initialization) and you don't have to create new rules, just produce better code. Would you have a counter example to that ? (i.e. a currently existing Global in Pharo which cannot be reimplemented as a class with some state in it?)

Thierry

De : Pharo-dev [pharo-dev-bounces@lists.pharo.org] de la part de Igor Stasenko [siguctua@gmail.com]
Date d'envoi : samedi 14 d�cembre 2013 05:41
� : Discusses Development of Pharo
Objet : [Pharo-dev] Another thought about globals

As you may know, smalltalk global dictionary contain all symbols defined globally,

so you can access them directly in any piece of code i.e. when you write:

Object new

it actually means 'send message #new to object, associated with #Object name in globals dictionary.

Most of globals are classes, but some of them , like Transcript, World, Display etc are not.

And i was always thinking there's something wrong with these globals (actually there's multiple 'wrongs'), but finally, i think i can answer myself, what is most basic wrong with them: they miss any form of declaration.

Most of variables in smalltalk require declaration, such as temps, method arguments, instance variables , class variables, pool variables,

but not globals.

Even classes, from formal point of view do not require declaration,

because actually the usual:

Object subclass: #Collection
    instanceVariableNames: ''
    classVariableNames: 'MutexForPicking RandomForPicking'
    poolDictionaries: ''
    category: 'Collections-Abstract'

is _definition_ but not declaration:

Collection definition =>

'Object subclass: #Collection
    instanceVariableNames: ''''
    classVariableNames: ''MutexForPicking RandomForPicking''
    poolDictionaries: ''''
    category: ''Collections-Abstract'''

in fact, it is just a message sent to 'Object' variable (at some moment in the past) , and there's nothing

in language which enforces the rule that evaluating such expression must declare new global, named Collection, except from environment we're working in.

The absence of declaration for globals leads to following problems:

since declaration point is not defined, all tools (including compiler) assume that given name always been there, and always accessible. Which leads to bootstrap problems.

There's no way to determine if given piece of code (which uses some global) will keep functioning properly, once you unload certain package. No way to determine dependencies (and as consequence the order of code loading during bootstrapping).
Also, it is hard to determine, to which package certain global belongs. While it is easy to tell for classes since they having category, for globals like Transcript, Display etc, there's no way to tell anything.

Piece of cake, you can say: since Display is instance of DisplayScreen class, then such variable must belong to same package as DisplayScreen, right?
Wrong!

Just for example, imagine i create variable named MyWindowMousePosition, which will contain an instance of Point. Does it means that such variable should belong to same package as Point class? I guess not.

So, to sum up, i think we should really think how to introduce a way to declare globals in package-based ecosystem, where each global belongs to certain package, and then since packages form dependency hierarchy, you can easily detect whether you allowed to use certain global in given context or not,

to prevent forming dependency loops.

But even if we will weaken contract and allow having dependency loops, even in such case declarations can help us to clearly tell which pieces of code will stop functioning properly, if package which declares given variable are not present in system.

The last aspect of bootstrapping problem is order of initialization,
because declaring variable doesn't means you can use it right away,
since it may be not properly initialized yet (otherwise we will be forced to always use lazy initialization pattern).

>From this perspective, IMO package should not only have unordered list of classes/symbols it declares/defines, but also contain information in which order they must be initialized while loaded.
>From other side, i don't really like introducing too much formalism and rules, and keep them as minimal as possible, following smalltalk spirit.

What you think?

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko.