Doug Way <dway at riskmetrics.com> wrote:
> Some other things that came up during the modules discussion (that I 
> forgot to mention when we created this summary) were various other 
> aspects of module systems such as module unloading, dependencies, 
> namespaces, etc.
> 
> The general feeling seemed to be that we don't have to have all of these 
> features present in a "module system" before we start breaking out stuff 
> from the image, and that these features could be added incrementally to 
> Squeak.  Some features such as dependency management would be useful 
> sooner rather than later, to help manage the broken-off packages.  Some 

Exactly. That is why dependency management is a top priority for the
next release of SM. Roadmap for that will be posted soon. I have a model
lined up for it that I have been getting concensus on at OOPSLA - and
that Daniel also likes. :-)

> people thought package unloading would be very useful (and I tend to 
> agree), but no one thought it was needed right away, and Michael made 
> the point that it can be a tricky feature to get right.  There didn't 

Yes, unloading/uninstalling is tricky business and sure - sometime we
will start tackling it - I happen to know that DVS is getting some of
this "as we speak" but in general it is a hard problem. But that doesn't
stop us from starting using packages or to to start building images (by
loading packages in layers). One step at a time!

> seem to be much demand for adding namespaces in the near term.

Right.

> Anyway, these were my additional impressions from the meeting.

Agree.

regards, Göran