Guarana (was: slate comments)

Jecel Assumpcao Jr. jecel@tunes.org
Mon, 20 Mar 2000 20:11:20 -0300


Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> The factorization of meta-object behavior in CodA is sound, but IMHO
> extending it is not as simple, because, in order to extend it, you
> have to modify or replace the standard meta-objects.  Then, when you
> want to combine multiple such modifications, you may end up in
> trouble, because they may conflict, and it may turn out to be
> impossible to combine the meta-objects you want.  That's because the
> extension of meta-objects is not disciplined, i.e., there's no
> standard interface a meta-object should implement, by means of which
> any meta-object can be plugged into the meta-system.

True, meta-object composition is a major design issue. I have just taken a
quick look at some Guaranį papers and it seems like a very interesting approach
to this problem. It seems like a more disciplined version of Apertos.

On the other hand, the issues CodA addressed were mostly orthogonal to
meta-configuration. It seems to me, for example, that it would be easy to
implement CodA *in* Guaranį (you just have to intercept message sending and
method returns, right?).

-- Jecel