Re: Big diatribe on protocols & classes (was Re: Can a Swarminstancebe treated like a SwarmObject instance?

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "WS" == William S Shu <address@hidden> writes:

WS> In a subsequent version, can we
WS> officially (formally or whatever) hold that Swarm responds to all
WS> the [interface] methods of SwarmObject or, failing that, indicate
WS> which methods of SwarmObject a swarm protocol would respond to.

In the current sources, Swarm adopts SwarmProcess and CREATABLE. 
It would be nice to organize the probe methods into a separate protocol
and have Swarm and SwarmProcess each adopt those.

(It's certainly the intent that both Swarm and SwarmObject respond to -drop.)

WS> The alternative would be to make explicit how hierarchies of
WS> swarms (swarms of swarms) can be handled!

Swarm hierarchies are created using activateIn:.  This sounds like
a different question.

As for how to mix Swarm and SwarmObjects in a collection, that's easy:
remove the type and protocol qualifiers.

As for the problem of compiler complaints about protected variables,
if you really want to to assign directly to inherited state, put
"@public" before the relevant inherited variables in the superclass
@interface.  Incidentally, the Java interface to Swarm won't allow
you to assign to inherited variables, it will be necessary to use
setter methods.

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