About Squeak evolution

ducasse stephane ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Mon Oct 1 07:09:48 UTC 2001


Hi dan 


>Hi dan,
>
>I was wondering if it would not be wise to have an official version of
>Squeak now. Like that we can have the time to work on the new versions with
>modules.
>
>Else the module process from my experience may take some time and having a
>new version now could be referred as the version before the modules.
>Especially because 3.0 was put together in a hurry and is not really good
>for demoes and the like. For example I'm writing columns and I'm referring
>to 2.8 because 3.0 has broken examples and I would love to move to 3.1. In
>addition this also give a new release which is good (like microsoft) people
>have to upgrade. As an example I could put 3.1 on the cd with the article
>and say the new Squeak ;).
> 
> Ahh... a message I agree with.  (;-).

But agreeing or not has nothing with contents..... Ok it has ;)
If you are refering to {}  we should have a discussion with
arguments once. I was discussing with nathanael and roel and we ended up
with the same conclusion. So I would like to see the other camp point of
view. 

I think that Scheme has a process for improvement that allows parties to
write down arguments and confrontation. May be they have too much time to be
able to do that ;)

For the module decomposition it would be great to see if we can use the
analysis of Ginsu, this way you could check a decomposition. Hans-martin is
far better than me so I'm sure he will come up with something ;)



> 
> Yes, I think you're absolutely right.  I'm wedged with a couple of other
> projects, but in the next day or two, I'll issue Doug's most recent harvesting
> (35 updates) and seal off 3.1 alpha.  Requestors of updates will be given a
> choice of going to 3.2 alpha, or settling in to 3.1 beta.  We'll keep the 3.1
> beta updates open for a week or two, and then declare it 3.1 final.

Great!!!
I think that this is important. we will be able to push Squeak a bit more
with 3.1. It would be great if we could have Squeak 3.1 for mid november
like that we can push it for christmas ;) I hope to have a nice column with
3.1 as gift. I have a friend who is finishing a french book on Squeak and
using 3.1 instead 2.8 would be really important for him.
 
> Incidentally the main failure with 3.0, in my opinion, was that no one took
> full responsibility for the final phase where fixes and nothing else should
> have been carefully added, and then a final clean image posted.  This is a
> place where SqF, and the harvester-types especially, could be a great help.
> It is my hope that a few people who are motivated to see a nice stable 3.1
> release will organize themselves and help out by selecting and testing all
> updates appropriate to 3.1 after it goes beta.  Given such help, I am willing,
> as time allows (meaning probably after OOPSLA), to do all the normal work of
> tidying up the image once we have settled on the final updates (I'll probably
> send out a gamma image for this purpose near the end).

I want to test the image as soon as it is out. I plan to redo all my demoes
so I can certainly check some parts.

> Following the step to 3.2 alpha, I will issue the module updates, so 3.2 will
> be (at least "weakly") modular from the start.

I do not know if you want to play the same trick that with 3.0 with having
two tracks because I imagine that introducing and refactoring code may shake
the image for a moment. But I'm not sure that having two streams is good
either.

Stef





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