I'm not sure whether merging is the right way to go. One argument in favor is that otherwise one ends up having a model full of "empty" metaclasses, as the large majority of metaclasses do not implement any methods. Visually this results in a system complexity view with dual inheritance hierarchies. One argument against is that if a metaclass does implement methods, in the case of a merge, the metaclass methods would be mixed up with the "normal" methods (of course you would still be able to differentiate them within the model). Merging would just be trying to make up one (of the very few) shortcoming(s) of Smalltalk's design. With respect to shared variables, that's another thing that I think is a bit overengineered..
Cheers
Michele
On 7-Nov-08, at 8:42 PM, Alexandre Bergel wrote:
As far as I can see, an analysis may depend on whether you merge classes and metaclasses. It seems hard to imagine than any analysis should be depend on whether there is such a merging.
you mean independent? If we have the same data represented the same way independently of merging we favor that an analysis code does have to have different cases based on merging or not?
Maybe there is something I misunderstood. Merging classes and metaclasses when importing means that one single class will represent both the class and its metaclass I guess. This means that there will be twice less classes in a model. A system complexity view on a imported (using merging) smalltalk application will be different than the one with no merging. No?
Alexandre
-- _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.
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