User's Guide
The Smalltalk global namespace consists of the following components:
- One unmanaged namespace
- A number of managed namespaces, which are also called application
namespaces
- The unmanaged namespace
- Contains bindings from names to global variables and pools that are
introduced into the image using runtime protocols (such as,
at:put:, declareVariable:, and
declarePoolDictionary:) sent to the Smalltalk
dictionary.
IBM Smalltalk does not create, maintain, or remove bindings from the
runtime structures in the unmanaged namespace.
- A managed namespace
- Exists for each application. For an application and its
subapplications, the managed namespace contains:
- Bindings from names to application variables and pools declared using the
mechanism described in Declarations
- Bindings for defined classes
A name cannot be in both the unmanaged namespace and a managed
namespace.
To ensure compatibility with existing protocols that operate on the
unmanaged namespace, a name cannot be defined in more than one application
namespace.
A Smalltalk image component contains a fully formed
representation of its application namespace. This simplifies and
accelerates the initialization of the image component. An image
component cannot be created for an application that has unmanaged pools or
variables.
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