One we did for Pharo4 is to use the Associations of Globals to model these variables as meta-objects (in the same spirit as the Slot objects).

Thos means that
-> there is an Api to get them
-> they have an API to read /write

This is just ��sugar�� on what the associations did already:

global := SmalltalkImage classVariableNamed: #CompilerClass.
global read.
global class
==> ClassVariable

Having objects for concepts like this allows of course to leverage the power of

the tools�� e.g. this adds an inspect pane that shows all users of variables:

14562 add a Users tab to GTInspector for Slots and LiteralVariables
https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/14562