This is the difference between Forwarding and Delegation [1]. Accessorily to this discussion, the name "Virus" does not yet convince me: - first, it has a negative connotation in informatics. People do not want to have virus installed. They do not want virus infecting their machines. People using Pharo for business will not install Viruses nor write ones :) - regarding the metaphorical aspect, a virus contaminates an organism, and moreover, we want to eliminate it not keep it... - besides, Virus might be a fancy name, but you already have a fancy/fantasy name in the project: Ghost. Thus, I would not call the class implementing such behavior a virus. The "meta" vocabulary is already complex, and specially the one around proxies. I think that adding virus to it only complexifies even more the context... I would stick with the behavior used by the rest of the world in this case. Guille [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forwarding_(object-oriented_programming)#Examp... -------- Original Message --------
I think I not understood second part of "self problem" in this paper. But self sends are covered by virus as I described.
2016-07-28 11:30 GMT+02:00 Denis Kudriashov <dionisiydk@gmail.com <mailto:dionisiydk@gmail.com>>:
Hi
2016-07-27 22:19 GMT+02:00 Steven Costiou <steven.costiou@kloum.io <mailto:steven.costiou@kloum.io>>:
Hi,
I use virus from Ghost to intercept messages sent to a given object and adapt methods behaviors for this particular object only. However it would seems that doing interception this way is subject to the "self problem" described in this paper from Stéphane (DUCASSE, Stéphane. Evaluating message passing control techniques in Smalltalk. /JOURNAL OF OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING/, 1999, vol. 12, p. 39-50).
I understand i could do instance based adaptation using an other technique, but i wonder if there is any way with Ghost to deal with this "self problem" problem ?
I think "self problem" is only related to classic proxies when objects stay behind them. But ObjectVirus is not proxy in this meaning. When you infect your object by virus it is not replaced by somebody else. It is same original instance but with overridden behaviour. That's why I call it virus without any relation to proxies. Any message to infected object is processed by your behaviour. All self sends are intercepted. But there are few exceptions: - special messages like ==,ifTrue/ifNil are not intercepted - meta messages are not intercepted. They processed by Ghost mechanics but they not passed to your behaviour. Meta messages defined by #currentMetaLevel of your behaviour. You could implement it like:
YourGhostBehaviour>>currentMetaLevel
^GHMetaLevel empty
Empty meta level means that all messages will be passed to your behaviour. There is also "GHMetaLevel standard" which is default one. It makes most of "tool messages" not interceptable. For example #printString, #class, #instVarAt: will be not intercepted. It's messages which are usually used by tools like inspector and debugger. Standard meta level simplifies debugging of new behaviours. If you make mistake somewhere standard messages will be not broken and you could debug error by tools.