Tying a ribbon on 3.2

Hannes Hirzel hannes.hirzel.squeaklist at bluewin.ch
Thu Apr 18 08:57:14 UTC 2002


Dan Ingalls <Dan at SqueakLand.org> wrote:
> Folks -

> 
> 3.  It would be nice if majorShrink did a reasonable job "out of the box".  If you have worked with this in 3.2 and can offer a set of changes to make majorShrink work well, please let me know ASAP.

I have worked on this and put some draft documentation I collected from
the mailing list on the swiki ealier this year.

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2182
and 
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2002-January/0083
99.html

I did some smaller images for my own use sucessfully. 

I'll check and during the rest of this week and beginning next week  the
majorShrink method in 3.2g and try if it can be enhanced for the general
user in some way. Then I will update the documentation.

I know that some of you (Doug Way, Mayuresh Kathe and others?) have been
working on this as well. Please tell me what you're at and send me your
versions of majorShrink. Perhaps we can include different ones or
parametrize them in some way for inclusion in 3.2g. 

Especially important is that the images you get when using the
majorShrink methods are tested for some time.

It might be an idea to keep traffic on this list down a bit to put your
contribution directly on the swiki.

Another idea is that instead of coming up with a ready made majorShrink
version we could document the process so that an expericend user can
come up with his own version more or less easily.

Or perhaps the easiest thing is to have several majorShrink methods
which create images for different purposes:

0. MVC-only system (< 1MB)
1. Minimal Morphic system for the use as a small utility program
  which can be easily shared (it would be nice if it fits on a floppy
when zipped)
2a. Basic Morphic system with sample applications / projects (4..6 MB)
2b. Morphic PDA image with PDA applications (3..5 MB)
3a. Multimedia authoring system (8 MB)
3b. Lightweight presentation system (like a powerpoint viewer); the same
as 3a, but some of
    the authoring tools removed (4 MB)
4. Swiki server
5. Full image (as it is now) (16MB)
6. Extended images (AspectS and other applications / goodies / projects
already loaded and tested in combination) (16..50 MB)


I think point 6 is important as well. There are users for whom a 50MB
image is no problem, but hunting for additional applications and
projects and doing the loading is a major obstacle. 
So I would like to see an image with even more sample projects added
(for example the ThingLab). The colloquium in Berne two days reminded me
that we need a good collection of ready made images with interesting
things in it so one can target an audience more easily.

Any help is appreciated...

Hannes


P.S. If somebody has some metrics how much space each major subsystem of
the current images uses that would help the people doing the majorShrink
methods.



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