[Seaside] [ANN] Seaside Installer

[Avi Bryant]

On Aug 7, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Lukas Renggli wrote:

> I created a package called "Seaside Installer" on SqueakMap. Loading
> it will pull-in all the requirements to get a Seaside server running
> in a fresh image. This installer could maybe later on replace the
> official "Seaside" package on SqueakMap.

So here's a challenge, related to the modularity thread on squeak- 
dev.  What's the smallest image someone can produce which can fully  
use this installer?  Possibly by bringing in some extra required  
packages as well?

I've personally been more heartened by the somewhat ad-hoc shrinking  
work that Pavel, Steve Swerling, etc were doing (especially the  
series of 3.7 images like QuiteSmall.image) than by the more  
ambitious work being done at the SqF level.  In the long term, maybe  
the top-down modularize-everything work done in 3.9/3.10, and the  
bottom-up bootstrapping of Spoon will combine to give us something  
great.  In the meantime, I'd love to see a messy monolithic image  
with legacy bits, but that was as small as practically possible,  
which had roughly the same status for package releasers as  
3.7/3.8/3.9 do: that is, when releasing something like the Seaside  
Installer, we'd try to make sure it worked on that image as well.  I  
think it's important that the compatibility work go in that direction  
rather than the other way - such images have in the past shipped with  
modified versions of MC, Seaside, etc, but that's unsustainable; as a  
package maintainer, I'd rather be making sure that my own packages  
loaded into it cleanly than worrying about someone else keeping a  
branch.

If someone does release such an image - say, a 4MB 3.7-based image  
with bare-bones morphic, basic dev tools (browser/debugger/workspace/ 
inspector/transcript and nothing else), and enough network and file  
support to bring in the Seaside Installer - I'll commit to trying to  
keep any packages I have a hand in loadable on it going forward. FWIW.

Avi