Determine VAST version from image file?

[irccwh]

Is there anything in the image ICX file that would tell me what version of VAST was used to create it? I don't see anything that jumps out at me on a quick text scan..

Thanks,
Chad

[wembley]

Chad -

This is a harder question than you might imagine. Any development image has an initial state (as shipped from Instantiations) which corresponds to a particular version of the product. We'll call this the 'template image'. But once you modify any method, or load a newer (or older) version of a method, in that image, then it becomes unclear what the version of the modified image is.

So the best that anyone could say is "this image is based on a 'template image' from VA Smalltalk Vn.n.n". And even then, the information could be wrong since anyone could have modified the Smalltalk code (System vaVersion) that reports the version of the 'template image'.

This, of course, pre-supposes that you want to discover this information by running some snippet of Smalltalk code in the image. But perhaps you want to discover this information without executing the image. Unfortunately, we do not embed any signature in the .icx file itself that identifies the product version that its 'template image' was shipped with.

I would be happy to consider adding such a signature for future releases if it is important to you since it fits in nicely with internal development requirements we have.

[koschate]

I think it would be a good thing to do. There's another commercial Smalltalk vendor that uses such information in a script in order to launch the correct VM for the image version - it works quite nicely.

[irccwh]

Thanks, John.

Either a signature to hint at the VM/VAST version or to store our own version number (and easily retrieve it without executing the image) would be helpful.