Parcels: A fast and feature-rich binary deployment technology

Miranda, Eliot; Leibs, David; Wuyts, Roel

doi:10.1016/j.cl.2005.02.001

Cited by 4 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This scenario is the motivation behind Parcels [MLW05], a fast binary format developed in Visualworks Smalltalk. The assumption is that the user may not have a problem if saving code takes more time, as long as loading is really fast.…”

Section: Exportmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A much more elaborated approach is Parcel [MLW05] developed in VisualWorks Smalltalk. Parcel is an atomic deployment mechanism for objects and source code that supports shape changing of classes, method addition, method replacement and partial loading.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Defining how to serialize, where, when and what to export, which file format, etc., are just a few more problems that have to be addressed too [MLW05].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Object swapping challenges: An evaluation of imageSegment

Peck

Bouraqadi

Ducasse

et al. 2012

Computer Languages, Systems & Structures

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In object-oriented systems, runtime memory is composed of an object graph in which objects refer to other objects. This graph of objects evolves while the system is running. Graph exporting and swapping are two important object graph operations. Exporting refers to copying the graph to some other memory so that it can be loaded by another system. Swapping refers to moving the graph to a secondary memory (e.g., a hard disk) to temporary release part of the primary memory (e.g., RAM).Exporting and swapping are achieved in different ways and the speed in presence of large object graphs is critical. Nevertheless, most of the existing solutions do not address well this issue. Another challenge is to deal with common situations where objects outside the exported/swapped graph point to objects inside the graph. To correctly load back an exported subgraph, it is necessary to compute and export extra information that is not explicit in the object subgraph. This extra information is needed because certain objects may require to be reinitialized or recreated, to run specific code before or after the loading, to be updated to a new class definition, etc.In this paper, we present all general problems to our knowledge about object exporting and swapping. As a case of study, we present an analysis of ImageSegment, a fast solution to export and swap object graphs, developed by Dan Ingalls. ImageSegment addresses the speed problems in an efficient way, as shown by the results of several benchmarks we have conducted using Pharo Smalltalk. However, ImageSegment is not a panacea since it still has other problems that hampers its general use.

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Section: Exportmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Object swapping challenges: An evaluation of imageSegment

Peck

Bouraqadi

Ducasse

et al. 2012

Computer Languages, Systems & Structures

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“…For example, in case of remote objects, e.g., remote method invocation and distributed systems [3,9,29], objects need to be serialized and passed around the network. A Version Control System that deals with code represented as first-class objects needs to serialize and materialize those objects: Parcels [17] is a typical example. Today's web applications need to store state in the HTTP sessions and move information between the client and the server.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The natural question is if we can use serializers as a code management system underlying mechanism. VisualWorks Smalltalk introduced a pickle format to save and load code called Parcels [17]. However, such infrastructure is more suitable for managing code than a general purpose object graph serializer.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fuel: a fast general purpose object graph serializer

et al. 2012

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SUMMARYBecause objects need to be stored and reloaded on different environments, serializing object graphs is a very important activity. There is a plethora of serialization frameworks with different requirements and design trade‐offs. Most of them are based on recursive parsing of the object graphs, an approach which often is too slow. In addition, most of them prioritize a language‐agnostic format instead of speed and language‐specific object serialization. For the same reason, such serializers usually do not support features such as class‐shape changes, global references or executing pre and post load actions. Looking for speed, some frameworks are partially implemented at Virtual Machine (VM) level, hampering code portability and making them difficult to understand, maintain and extend.In this paper, we present Fuel, a general‐purpose object serializer based on these principles: (1) speed, through a compact binary format and a pickling algorithm which invests time in serialization for obtaining the best performance on materialization; (2) good object‐oriented design, without special help at VM; and (3) serialize any object, thus have a full‐featured language‐specific format.We implement and validate this approach in Pharo, where we demonstrate that Fuel is faster than other serializers, even those with special VM support. The extensibility of Fuel made possible to successfully serialize various objects: classes in Newspeak, debugger stacks, and full content management system object graphs. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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On the Revival of Dynamic Languages

Nierstrasz

Bergel

Denker

et al. 2005

Software Composition

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The programming languages of today are stuck in a deep rut that has developed over the past 50 years. Although we are faced with new challenges posed by enormous advances in hardware and internet technology, we continue to struggle with old-fashioned languages based on rigid, static, closed-world file-based views of programming. We argue the need for a new class of dynamic languages that support a view of programming as constant evolution of living and open software models. Such languages would require features such as dynamic first-class namespaces, explicit meta-models, optional, pluggable type systems, and incremental compilation of running software systems.

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Parcels: A fast and feature-rich binary deployment technology

Cited by 4 publications

References 8 publications

Object swapping challenges: An evaluation of imageSegment

Object swapping challenges: An evaluation of imageSegment

Fuel: a fast general purpose object graph serializer

On the Revival of Dynamic Languages

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