You use a passive image to package a project for processing on a different target platform. You populate a passive image with the application code and runtime support code needed to run the headless application on the target platform. A passive image is not used as a development tool; code placed in the passive image cannot be run until it is packaged and placed in a target environment.

Passive images are controlled from a window called the XD Transcript. Each new passive image has its own XD Transcript, which is to the passive image what the System Transcript is to the development image. From any Transcript window, you can select the XD menu item to manipulate passive images. From the XD menu, you can create new passive images, delete images, change the properties of an image, open the stack dump debugger or the interactive debugger, or change what image you want your browsers set to.

Most of the windows opened within an image are specific to that image; that is, the windows only display information for the image on which they were opened. The title bar of a window indicates whether it applies to a passive image. All windows opened for a passive image are named with an XD and the title of the passive image. For example, if you create a passive image named My Image, the configuration maps browser has the following title bar: XD Configuration Maps [My Image]. Windows whose title bar does not contain XD belong to the development image, which is the image that contains the development tools and Smalltalk development environment.

See Packaging a Smalltalk image for information about creating passive images and loading code into them to package your headless application.