A simple reflective object kernel

A class-based reflective minimal kernel

"The difference between classes and objects has been repeatedly emphasized. In the view presented here, these concepts belong to different worlds: the program text only contains classes; at run-time, only objects exist. This is not the only approach. One of the subcultures of object-oriented programming, influenced by Lisp and exemplified by Smalltalk, views classes as object themselves, which still have an existence at run-time." B. Meyer Object-Oriented Software Construction

As this quote expresses it, there is a realm where classes are true objects, instances of other classes. In such systems such as Smalltalk, Pharo, CLOS, classes are described by other classes and form often reflective architectures each one describing the previous level. In this chapter we will explore a minimal reflective class-based kernel, inspired from ObjVlisp . In the following chapter you will implement step by step such a kernel in less than 30 methods.

ObjVlisp

ObjVlisp was published the first time in 1986 when the foundation of object-oriented programming was still emerging . ObjVlisp has explicit metaclasses and supports metaclass reuse. It was inspired from the kernel of Smalltalk-78. The IBM SOM-DSOM kernel is similar to ObjVLisp while implemented in C++ . ObjVlisp is a subset of the reflective kernel of CLOS since CLOS reifies instance variables, generic functions, and method combination . In comparison to ObjVlisp, Smalltalk or Pharo have implicit metaclasses and no metaclass reuse except by basic inheritance but it is more stable as explained by Bouraqadi et al . Studying this kernel is really worth since it has the following properties:

• It unifies class and instances (there is only one data structure to represent all objects, classes included),
• It is composed of only two classes Class and Object (It relies on existing elements such as booleans, arrays, string of the underlying implementation language),
• It raises the question of meta-circularity infinite regression (a class is instance of another class that is an instance of yet another class ...) and how to resolve it,
• It forces to revisit allocation, class and object initialization, message passing as well as bootstrap,
• It can be implemented in less than 30 methods in Pharo.

Just remember that this kernel is self-described so we will start to explain some aspects and since everything is linked you may have to read the chapter twice to fully get it.

ObjVLisp's six postulates

The original ObjVlisp kernel is defined by six postulates . Some of them look a bit dated by today standards and the 6th postulate is simply wrong as we will explain later (A solution is simple to design and implement).

Here we report them as stated in the paper for sake of historical perspective.

1. An object represents a piece of knowledge and a set of capabilities.
2. The only protocol to activate an object is message passing: a message specifies which procedure to apply (denoted by its name, the selector) and its arguments.
3. Every object belongs to a class that specifies its data (attributes called fields) and its behavior (procedures called methods). Objects will be dynamically generated from this model, they are called instances of the class. Following Plato, all instances of a class have same structure and shape, but differ through the values of their common instance variables.
4. A class is also an object, instantiated by another class, called its metaclass. Consequently (P3), to each class is associated a metaclass which describes its behavior as an object. The initial primitive metaclass is the class Class, built as its own instance.
5. A class can be defined as a subclass of one (or many) other class(es). This subclassing mechanism allows sharing of instance variables and methods, and is called inheritance. The class Object represents the most common behavior shared by all objects.
6. If the instance variables owned by an object define a local environment, there are also class variables defining a global environment shared by all the instances of a same class. These class variables are defined at the metaclass level according to the following equation: class variable [an-object] = instance variable [an-object’s class].

Kernel overview

If you do not fully grasp the following overview, do not get worry, this full chapter is here to make sure that you will understand it. Let us get started.

Contrary to a real uniform language kernel, ObjVlisp does not consider arrays, booleans, strings, numbers or any other elementary objects as part of the kernel as this is the case in a real bootstrap such as the one of Pharo. ObjVLisp's kernel focuses on understanding Class/Object core relationships.

Figure shows the two core classes of the kernel:

• Object which is the root of the inheritance graph and is instance of Class.
• Class is the first class and root of the instantiation tree and instance of itself as we will see later.

Figure shows that the class Workstation is an instance of the class Class since it is a class and it inherits from Object the default behavior objects should exhibit. The class WithSingleton is an instance of the class Class but in addition it inherits from Class since this is a metaclass: its instances are classes. As such, it changes the behavior of classes. The class SpecialWorkstation is an instance of the class WithSingleton and inherits from Workstation since its instances exhibits the same behavior as Workstation.

The two diagrams and will be explained step by step during all this chapter.

The key point to understand such a reflective architecture is that message passing always looks up methods in the class of the receiver of the message and then follows the inheritance chain (See Figure ).

Figure illustrates two main cases:

• When we send a message to BigMac or Minna, the corresponding method is looked up in their corresponding classes Workstation or SpecialWorkstation and follows the inheritance link up to Object.
• When we send a messsage to the classes Workstation or SpecialWorkstation, the corresponding method is looked up in their class, the class Class up to Object.

Instances

In this kernel, there is only one instantiation link, it is applied at all the levels as shown by Figure :

• Terminal instances are obviously objects: a workstation named mac1 is an instance of the class Workstation, a point 10@20 is instance of the class Point.
• Classes are also objects instances of other classes: the class Workstation is an instance of the class Class, the class Point is an instance of the class Class.

In our diagrams, we represent objects (mainly terminal instances) as round corner rectangles with the list of instance variable values. Since classes are objects, when we want to stress that classes are objects we use the same graphical convention as shown in Figure .

Handling infinite recursion

A class is an object. Thus it is an instance of another class, its metaclass. This metaclass is an object too, instance of a metametaclass that is an object too instance of another a metametametaclass...... To stop this potential infinite recursion, ObjVlisp uses similar to solutions proposed in many meta circular systems: one instance is instance of itself.

A class is an object. Thus, it is an instance of another class, its metaclass. This metaclass is an object as well, instance of a metametaclass which is itself an instance of another a metametametaclass...

In ObjVLisp:

• Class is the initial class and metaclass,
• Class is instance of itself and directly or undirectly all other metaclasses are instances of Class.

We will see later the implication of this self instantiation at the level of the class structure itself.

Understanding metaclasses

The model unifies classes and instances. When we follow the instance related postulates of the kernel we get:

• Every object is instance of a class,
• A class is an object instance of a metaclass, and
• A metaclass is only a class that generates classes.

At the implementation level there is only one kind of entity: objects. There is no special treatment for classes. Classes are instantiated following the same process than terminal instances. There are sent messages the same way other objects are sent messages too.

This unification between instances and classes does not mean that we do not distinguish objects and classes. Indeed not all the objects are classes. In particular, the sole difference between a class and an instance is the ability to respond to the creation message: new. Only a class knows how to respond to it. Then metaclasses are just classes whose instances are classes as shown in Figure .

Instance structure

The model does not really bring anything new about instance structure when compared with languages such as Pharo or Java.

Instance variables are an ordered sequence of instance variables defined by a class. Such instance variables are shared by all instances. The values of such instance variables are specific to each instance. Figure shows that instances of Workstation have two values: a name and a next node.

In addition we should note that an object has a pointer to its class. As we will see when we will come to inheritance, every object possesses an instance variable class (inherited from Object) that points to its class.

Note that this management of class instance variable defined in Object is specific to the model. In Pharo for example, the class identification is not managed as a declared instance variable but as an element part of any object. It is an index in a class-table.

About behavior

Let us continue with basic instance behavior. As in modern class-based languages, this kernel has to represent how methods are stored and looked up.

Methods belong to a class. They define the behavior of all the instances of the class. They are stored into a method dictionary that associates a key (the method selector) and the method body.

Since the methods are stored in a class, the method dictionary should be described in the metaclass. Therefore, the method dictionary of a class is the value of the instance variable methodDict defined on the metaclass Class. Each class will have its own method dictionary.

Class as an object

Now it is time to ask us about the minimal information that a class should have. Here is the minimal information required:

• A list of instance variables to describe the values that the instances will hold,
• A method dictionary to hold methods,
• A superclass to look up inherited methods.

This minimal state is similar to the one of Pharo: Pharo Behavior class has a format (compact description of instance variables), method dictionary, and superclass link.

In ObjVLisp, we will had a name so that we can identify the class. As an instance factory, the metaclass Class possesses 4 instance variables that describe a class:

• name the class name,
• superclass its superclass (we limit to single inheritance),
• i-v the list of its instance variables, and
• methodDict a method dictionary.

Since a class is an object. A class possesses the instance variable class inherited from Object that refers to its class as any object.

Example: class Point

Figure shows the instance variable values for the class Point as declared by the programmer and before class initialization and inheritance take place.

• It is an instance of class Class: indeed this is a class.
• It is named 'Point'.
• It inherits from class Object.
• It has two instance variables: x and y. After inheritance it will be three instance variables: class, x, and y.
• It has a method dictionary.

Example: class Class

Figure describes the class Class itself. Indeed it is also an object.

• It is an instance of class Class: indeed this is a class.
• It is named 'Class'.
• It inherits from class Object
• It has four locally defined instance variables: name, superclass, i-v, and methodDict.
• It has a method dictionary.

Everything is an object

Figure describes a typical situation of terminal instances, class and metaclasses when looked at them using an object perspective. We see three level of instances: terminal objects, instances of Workstation, Workstation and Point classes which are instances of Class and the metaclass Class which is instance of itself.

Sending a message

In this kernel, the second postulate states that the only way to perform computation is via message passing.

Sending a message is a two step process as shown by Figure

1. Method lookup: the method corresponding to the selector is looked up in the class of the receiver and its superclasses.
2. Method execution: the method is applied to the receiver. It means that self or this in the method will be bound to the receiver.

Conceptually, sending a message can be described by the following function composition:

sending a message (receiver argument)
	 return apply (lookup (selector classof(receiver) receiver) receiver arguments)

Method lookup

Now the lookup process is conceptually defined as follows:

1. The lookup starts in the class of the receiver.
2. If the method is defined in that class (i.e., if the method is defined in the method dictionary), it is returned.
3. Otherwise the search continues in the superclass of the currently explored class.
4. If no method is found and there is no superclass to explore (if we are in the class Object), this is an error.

The method lookup walks through the inheritance graph one class at a time using the superclass link. Here is a possible description of the lookup algorithm that will be used for both instance and class methods.

lookup (selector class receiver):
   if the method is found in class 
      then return it
      else if class == Object
           then send the message error to the receiver
           else lookup (selector superclass(class) receiver) 

Handling errors

When the method is not found, the message error is sent as shown in Figure . Sending a message instead of simply reporting an error using a trace or an exception is a key design decision. It corresponds to the doesNotUnderstand: message in Pharo and it is an important reflective hook. Indeed classes can define their own implementation of the method error and perform specific actions in reaction of messages that are not understood. For example, it is possible to implement proxies (objects representing other remote objects) or compile code on the fly by redefining locally such message.

Now it should be noted that the previous algorithm is not really good because in case of error there can be a mismatch between the number of arguments of the method we are looking for and the number of arguments of the error message.

A better way to handle error is to decompose the algorithm differently as follows:

lookup (selector class):
   if the method is found in class 
      then return it
      else if class == Object
           then return nil
           else lookup (selector superclass(class)) 

And then we redefined sending a message as follows:

sending a message (receiver argument)
   methodOrNil = lookup (selector classof(receiver)).
   if methodOrNil is nil
      then return send the message error to the receiver
      else return apply(methodOrNil receiver arguments)

Remarks

This lookup is conceptually the same in Pharo where all methods are public and virtual. There is no statically bound method, even class methods are looked up dynamically. This allows the possibility to define really elegant and dynamic registration mechanism.

While the look up happens at runtime, it is often cached. Languages usually have several systems of caches: one global (class, selector), one per call site.

Inheritance

There are two aspects of inheritance to consider:

• One static for the state where subclasses get superclass state. This instance variable inheritance is static in the sense that it happens only once at class creation time i.e., at compilation-time.

• One dynamic for behavior where methods are looked up during program execution. There the inheritance tree is walked at run-time.

Let's look at these two aspects.

Instance variable inheritance

Instance variable inheritance is done at class creation time and from that perspective static and performed once. When a class C is created, its instance variables are the union of the instance variables of its superclass with the instance variables defined locally in class C. Each language defines the exact semantics of instance variable inheritance, for example if they accept instance variables with the same name or not. In our model, we decide to use the simplest way: there should be no name duplicates.

instance-variables(aClass) =
	union (instance-variables(superclass(aClass)), local-instance-variables(aClass))

A word about union: when the implementation of the language is based on offsets to access instance variables, the union should make sure that the location of inherited instance variables are kept ordered compared to the superclass because in general we want that methods of the superclass can be applied to subclasses without copying them down and recompiling them. Indeed if a method uses a variable at a given position in the instance variable lists, applying this method to instance of subclasses should work. In the implementation proposed next chapter, we will use accessors and will not support direct access to instance variables from method body.

Method lookup

As previously described in Section , methods are looked up at runtime. Methods defined in superclasses are reused and applied to instances of subclasses. Contrary to instance variable inheritance, this part of inheritance is dynamic, i.e., it happens during program execution.

Object: defining the minimal behavior of any object

Object represents the minimal behavior that any object should understand. For example, returning the class of an object, being able to handle errors, initializing an object. This is why Object is the root of the hierarchy. Depending on language Object can be complex. In our kernel it is kept minimal as we will show in the implementation chapter.

Figure shows the inheritance graph without the presence of instantiation. A Workstation is an object (should at least understand the minimal behavior), so the class Workstation inherits directly or indirectly from the class Object. A class is an object (it should understand the minimal behavior) so the class Class inherits from class Object. In particular, the class instance variable is inherited from Object class.

Remark.

In Pharo, the class Object is not the root of inheritance. It is ProtoObject and Object inherits from it. Most of the classes still inherit from Object. The design of ProtoObject is special: the design goal of ProtoObject is to generate as many as errors as possible. Such errors can be then captured via doesNotUnderstand: redefinition and can support different scenarios such as proxy implementation.

Inheritance and instantiation together

Now that we saw independently the instantiation and the inheritance graph we can look at the complete picture. Figure shows the graphs and in particular how such graph are used during message resolution:

• the instantiation link is used to find the class where to start to look the method associated with the received message.
• the inheritance link is used to find inherited methods.

This process is also true when we send messages to the classes themselves. There is no difference between sending a message to an object or a class. The system always performs the same steps.

Refresh on self and super semantics

Since our experience showed us that even some book writers got key semantics of object-oriented programming wrong, we just refresh some facts that normally programmers familiar with object-oriented programming should fully master. For further readings refer to Pharo By Example or the Pharo Mooc available at http://mooc.pharo.org.

• self (also called this in languages like Java). self always represents the receiver of the message. The method lookup starts in the class of the receiver.
• super. super always represents the receiver of the message (and not the superclass). The method lookup starts in the superclass of the class containing the super expression (and not in the superclass of the class of the receiver: this would mean that it loops forever in case of inheritance tree of three classes - We let you to find how).

Looking at Figure we see that the key point is that B new bar returns 50 since the method is dynamically looked up and self represents the receiver i.e., the instance of the class B. What is important to see is that self sends act as a hook and that subclasses code can be injected in superclass code.

A new foo
>>> 10 
B new foo
>>> 50
A new bar
>>> 10
B new bar
>>> 50

For super, the situation depicted in Figure shows that super represents the receiver, but that when super is the receiver of a message, the method is looked up differently (starting from the superclass of the class using super) hence C new bar returns 100 and not 20 nor 60.

B new bar
>>> 20
C new bar
>>> 100

As a conclusion, we can say that self is dynamic and super static. Let us explain this view:

• When sending a message to self the lookup of the method begins in the class of the receiver. self is bound at execution-time. We do not know its value until execution time.
• super is static in the sense that while the object it will point to is only known at execution time, the place to look for the method is known at compile-time: it should start to look in the class above the one containing super.

Object creation

Now we are ready to understand the creation of objects. In this model there is only one way to create instances: we should send the message new to the class with a specification of the instance variable values as argument.

Creation of instances of the class Point

The following examples show several point instantiations. What we see is that the model inherits from the Lisp traditional of passing arguments using keys and values, and that the order of arguments is not important.

Point new :x 24 :y 6
>>> aPoint (24 6)
Point new :y 6 :x 24
>>> aPoint (24 6)

When there is no value specified, the value of an instance variable is initialized to nil. CLOS provides the notion of default instance variable initialization. It can be added to ObjVlisp as an exercise and does not bring conceptual difficulties.

Point new
>>> aPoint (nil nil)

When the same argument is passed multiple times, then the implementation takes the first occurence.

Point new :y 10 :y 15
>>> aPoint (nil 10)

We should not worry too much about such details: The point is that we can pass multiple arguments with a tag to identify it.

Creation of the class Point instance of Class

Since the class Point is an instance of the class Class, to create it, we should send the message new to the class as follows:

Class new 
   :name 'Point'
   :super 'Object'
   :ivs #(x y)
>>> aClass

Here what is interesting to see is that we use exactly the same way to create an instance of the class Point or the class itself. Note that this single way to create objects is supported by the argument variable list.

An implementation could have two different messages to create instances and classes. As soon as the same new, allocate, initialize methods are involved, the essence of the object creation is similar and uniform.

Instance creation: Role of the metaclass

The following diagram (Figure ) shows that against common expectations, when we create a terminal instance the metaclass Class is evolved in the process. Indeed, we send the message new to the class, to resolve this message, the system will look for the method in the class of the receiver (here Workstation) which the metaclass Class. The method new is found in the metaclass and applied to the receiver: the class Workstation. Its effect is to create an instance of the class Workstation.

The same happens when creating a class. Figure shows the process. We send a message, now this time, to the class Class. The system makes no exception and to resolve the message, it looks for the method in the class of the receiver. The class of the receiver is itself, so the method new found in Class is applied to Class (since it is the receiver of the message), and a new class is created.

new = allocate and initialize

In fact creating an object is a two step process: Creating an instance is the composition of two actions: memory allocation allocate message and object initialisation message initialize.

In Pharo syntax it means:

aClass new: args = (aClass allocate) initialize: args

What we should see is that:

• The message new is a message sent to a class. The method new is a class method.
• The message allocate is a message sent to a class. The method allocate is a class method.
• The message initialize: will be executed on any newly created instance. It means that when it will be sent to a class, a class initialize: method will be involved. When it will be sent to a terminal object, an instance initialize: method will be executed (defined in Object).

Object allocation: the message allocate

Allocating an object means allocating enough space to the object state but not only: it should mark instances with their class name or id. There is a really strong invariant in the model and in general in object-oriented programming model. Every single object must have an identifier to its class else the system will break when trying to resolve a message.

Object allocation should return:

• A newly created instance with empty instance variables (pointing to nil for example).
• But marked with an identifier to its class.

In our model, the marking of an object as instance of a class is performed by setting the value of the instance variable class inherited from Object. In Pharo this information is not recorded as a instance variable but encoded in the internal virtual machine object representation.

The allocate method is defined on the metaclass Class. Here are some examples of allocation.

Point allocate
>>> #(Point nil nil)

A point allocation allocates three slots: one for the class and two for x and y values.

Class allocate
>>>#(Class nil nil nil nil nil) 

The allocation for an object representing a class allocates six slots: one for class and one for each of the class instance variable: name, super, iv, keywords, and methodDict.

Object initialization

Object initialization is the process to get the values passed as arguments as key/value pair and assigned the value to the corresponding instance variable.

The following snippet illustrates it. An instance of class Point is created and the key/value pairs (:y 6) and (:x 24) are specified. The instance is created and it received the initialize: messages with the key/value pairs. The initialize: method is responsible to set the corresponding variables in the receiver.

Point new :y 6  :x 24
>>> #(Point nil nil) initialize: (:y 6 :x 24)]
>>> #(Point 24 6)

When an object is initialized as a terminal instance, two actions are performed:

• First we should get the values specified during the creation, i.e., get that y value is 6 and x value is 24,
• Second we should assign the values to the corresponding instance variables of the created object.

Class initialization

During its initialization a class should perform several steps:

• First as any it should get the arguments and assigned them to their corresponding instance variables. This is basically implemented by invoking the initialize method of Object via a super call since Object is the superclass of Class.
• Second the inheritance of instance variables should be performed. Before this step the class iv instance variable just contains the instance variables that are locally defined. After this step the instance variable iv will contain all the instance variables inherited and local. In particular this is here that the class instance variable inherited from Object is added to the instance variables list of the subclass of Object.
• Third the class should be declared to a class pool or namespaces so that as programmers we can access it via its name.

The Class class

Now we get a better understanding of what is the class Class. The class Class is:

• The initial metaclass and initial class.
• It defines the behavior of all the metaclasses.
• It defines the behavior of all the classes.

In particular, metaclasses define three messages related to instance creation.

• The new message creates an initialized instance of the class. It allocates the instance using the class message allocate and then initializes it by sending the message initialize: to this instance.
• The allocate message. As message new it is a class message. It allocates structure for newly created object.
• Finally the message initialize:. This message has two definitions one on Object and one on Class.

There is a difference between the method initialize: executed on any instance creation and the class initialize: method only executed when the created instance is a class.

• The first one is a method defined on the class of the object and potentially inherited from Object. This initialize: method just extracts the value corresponding to each instance variables from the argument list and sets them in the corresponding instance variables.

• The class initialize: method is executed when a new instance representing a class is executed. The message initialize: is sent to the newly created object but its specialisation for classes will be found during method lookup and it will be executed. Usually this method invokes the default ones because the class parameter should be extracted from the argument list and set in their corresponding instance variables but in addition, instance variable inheritance and class declaration in the class namespace is performed.

Defining a new Metaclass

Now we can study how we can add new metaclasses and see how the system handles them. To create a new metaclass is simple, it is enough to inherit from an existing one. May be this is obvious to you but this is what we will check now.

Abstract

Imagine that we want to define abstract classes. We set the abstractness of a class as the fact that it cannot create instances. To control the creation of instances of a class, we should define a new metaclass which forbids it. Therefore we will define a metaclass whose instances (abstract classes) cannot create instances.

We create a new metaclass named AbstractMetaclass which inherits from Class and we redefine the method new in this metaclass to raise an error (as shown in Figure ). The following code snippet defines this new metaclass.

Class new  
	:name 'AbstractMetaclass' 
	:super 'Class'

AbstractMetaclass 
	addMethod: #new
	body: [ :receiver :initargs | receiver error: 'Cannot create instance of class' ]

Two facts describe the relations between this metaclass and the class Class:

• AbstractMetaclass is a class: It is instance of Class.
• AbstractMetaclass defines class behavior: It inherits from Class.

AbstractMetaclass new :name 'Node' :super 'Object'

Sending a message new to the class Node will raise an error.

Node new 
>>> Cannot create instance of class

A subclass of Node, for example Workstation, can be a concrete class by being an instance of Class instead of AbstractMetaclass but still inheriting from Node. What we see in Figure is that there are two links: instanciation and inheritance and the method lookup follows them as we presented previously: always start in the class of the receiever and follow the inheritance link.

What is key to understand is that when we send the messsage new to the class Workstation, we look for methods first in the metaclass Class. When we send the message new to class Node we look in its class: AbstractMetaclass as shown in Figure . In fact we do what we do for any instances: we look in the class of the receiver.

A class method is just implemented and following the same semantics that instance methods: Sending the message error to the class Node starts in AbstractMetaclass and since we did not redefine it locally, and it is not found there, the lookup will continue in the superclass of AbstractClass: the class Class and then the superclass of class Class, the class Object.

About the 6th postulate

The 6th postulate of ObjVLisp is wrong. Let us read it again: If the instance variables owned by an object define a local environment, there are also class variables defining a global environment shared by all the instances of a same class. These class variables are defined at the metaclass level according to the following equation: class variable [an-object] = instance variable [an-object’s class].

It says that class instance variables are equivalent to shared variables between instances and this is wrong. Let us study this. According to the 6th postulate, a shared variable between instances is equal to an instance variable of the class. The definition is not totally clear so let us look at an example given in the article.

Illustrating the problem

Imagine that we would like the constant character '*' to be a class variable shared by all the points of a same class. We redefine the Point class as before, but metaclass of which (let us call it MetaPoint) specifies this common character For example if a point has a shared variable named char, this instance variable should be defined in the class of the class Point called MetaPoint. The author proposes to define a new metaclass MetaPoint to hold a new instance variable to represent a shared variable between points.

Class new
	:name 'MetaPoint'
	:super 'Class'
	:ivs #(char)

Then he proposes to use it as follows:

MetaPoint new
	:name Point
	:super 'Object'
	:ivs #(x y)
	:char '*'

The class Point can define a method that accesses the character just by going the class level. So why this is approach is wrong? Because it mixes levels. The instance variable char is not a class information. It describes the terminal instances and not the instance of the metaclass. Why the metaclass MetaPoint would need a char instance variable.

The solution

The solution is that the shared variable char should be held in a list of the shared variables of the class Point. Any point instance can access this variable. The implication is that a class should have an extra information to describe it: an instance variable sharedVariable holding pairs i.e., variable and its value. We should be able to write:

Class new
	:name Point
	:super 'Object'
	:ivs #(x y)
	:sharedivs {#char -> '*'}

Therefore the metaclass Class should get an extra instance variable named sharedivs and each of its instances (the classes Point, Node, Object) can have different values and such values can be shared among their instances by the compiler.

What we see is that sharedivs is from the Class vocabulary and we do not need one extra metaclass each time we want to share a variable. This design is similar to the one of Pharo where a class has a classVariable instance variable holding variable shared in all the subclasses of the class defining it.

Conclusion

We presented a really small kernel composed of two classes Object root of the inheritance tree and Class the first metaclass root of the instantiation tree. We revisited all the key points related to method lookup, object and class creation and initialisation. In the subsequent chapter we propose you to implement such kernel.

Further readings

The kernel presented in this chapter is a kernel with explicit metaclasses and as such it is not a panacea. Indeed it raised metaclass composition problems as explained in Bouraqadi et al. excellent article or .