[Morphic] Challenges: Maintaining Morphic

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Jerome.

You are right: I'm not maintining the Morphic packages anymore. Why? 
Well, I didn't like what Morphic became, although I always loved how it 
was when young. So I decided to help clean it. This was the start of 
MorphicSplitters and later the Morphic team. I did a first stage of 
splitting Morphic in packages, as you can see in 3.9. But the second 
stage proved too much work for me. It would take me many years. 
Literally. So, I lost my faith on that path. I'm rewriting a small 
Morphic kernel outside the official image (as you know). I lost my main 
reason for managing the official Morphic packages.

You seem to be pretty interested in fixing and enhancing the official 
Morphic. In fact, you are the guy who worked more than anyone else in 
Morphic this year. I find quite natural that you build the Morphic 
packages. I would be very happy with that.

WRT MC, all I can say is that right now you have more knowledge and 
experience with it than I had when the Morphic team was formed.

Cheers,
Juan


Peace Jerome escribió:
> What is the status of the morphic group now?
>
> We've all been quiet for quite some time. 
>
> I've been doing what I do on mantis. Fixing bugs and
> waiting for them to get included in 3dot9. The process
> for this seems to have stalled.
>
> It is my understanding:
>
> 1) Juan (and Marcus) have both  given up their
> responsibilities.
>  
> Up til then, I've counted on them to harvest the
> change sets and incorperate them into the Monticello
> packages.
>
> 2) Stef has all the world on his shoulders and has not
> focused his energy yet on harvesting morpic fixes.
>
> 3) He has asked others (myself included) to take over
> the responsibility of gathering cs's into the mcz
> packages.
>
> 4) I am too ignorant of Monticello's ins and outs to
> take on a task of that magnitude.
>
> 5) I am now feeling uncomfortable with the delay of
> getting the fixes into the image. It would be nice to
> see the annoying green color buttons now turn
> corrected. The changeset is there to do it. It just
> needs to be taken to the next stage.
>
> 6) My curiosity has gotten me to study why I am
> objecting to learning MC. And I am generating a list
> of my concerns with the current process.
>
> 7) The summary is to me it does not seem "safe" to
> learn. Here safe means learning should not "waste a
> lot of productive time"
>
> 8) Part of the reason is due to my particular
> circumstances. I work in a solitary fashion. Running
> into a diffuculty  usually means putting that project
> aside until such time as a clue pops up that allows
> further progress. The clue can arrive in a matter of
> days but it often takes months to overcome my
> ignorance. 
>
> 9) Part of the reason, in the context of maintaining
> morphic, is the morphic packages are large relative to
> what can be handled gracefully by Monticello.
>
> 10) So one of the useful tasks (for the morphic group)
> would be to whittle them down by attrition. Identify
> leaf Classes which don't have other classes depending
> on them and move them to thier own Morphic subpackage
> (assuming Monticello allows this)
>
> Now this is probably not something that meshes with
> the beta phase. Still it is the direction morphic
> needs to go in if it is to become easy to maintain
> with Monticello tools.
>
> And it is the one part of the problem that deserse to
> be considered by the followers of this list.
>
> 10a) How can we find out which Classes are leaf
> classes?
> 10b) How can they be packaged and removed from morphic
> or morphic extras?
> 10c) Are there more rational ways to split morphic
> into maintainable pieces? In other words what is the
> natural structure of morphic?
>
>
>
>
> Well, that took longer to explain than I thought. I
> realize this a lengthy post. I beiieve everything here
> needs to be seen and considered together to make
> sense.
>
>
> Please feel free to pick any piece of it that
> interests you an reply to that. Please modify the
> "Subject:" to aid clarity.
>
> Yours in service, --Jerome Peace
>
>
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