Dynamic open menus (was: Re: A summary of a few recent projects)

Eric Scharff Eric.Scharff at Colorado.EDU
Tue Oct 15 03:09:40 UTC 2002


On Sun, 13 Oct 2002 danielv at netvision.net.il wrote:

> Ned Konz <ned at bike-nomad.com> wrote:
> > On Sunday 13 October 2002 02:52 am, Stephane Ducasse wrote:
> > > Obviously really few people are using 3.3
> > > really few harvesting is done
> >
> > Unfortunately, Squeak Central is using 3.3, and so recent bug fixes
> > have been applied *only* to 3.3. It seems to be the other way around:
> > harvesting is being applied to 3.3, with 3.2 being an afterthought.
> Yes and that's the natural extension of how this community has always
> worked - one development version, others are (almost) dead.
>
> There might be better ways to proceed at this point, though. I think the
> most important dimension of freedom we need to add at this point is to
> have a package loader in 3.2. This will allow people to load a Squeak
> platform, and unto that, load packages by anyone.


I don't know if I can speak for other developers, but my general strategy
is to:

1. Do work that I want to be stable only in the current stable release.
   This involves the bulk of my research work, because I have enough
   trouble tracking down my own bugs without encountering bugs of
   others. :)
2. Try to play with the current experimental release as often as possible,
   but feel overwhelmed sometimes when things change.
3. Do "quantum leap" ports of old stuff to the newest stable release
   when it comes out.  Normally that hasn't been too bad, occasionally
   things break in nasty ways.

So I don't see stable releases as dead, nor have I encountered too many
nasty bugs in them that get fixed in later releases.  They may be extinct
but stable. :)

For selfish reasons, I prefer when people have packages that file into
stable releases and don't care as much on intermediate ones.  I wish I
could spend more time on the bleeding edge release, but the reality is
that my users tend not to be forgiving when my systems crash, so I avoid
it.

I would therefore be thrilled (and, indeed, would use) a package system
someone built on top of 3.2 so that one need not be at the bleeding edge
to use stuff.  However, I appreciate the pain of package maintainers who
have to maintain multiple versions and keep them more-or-less in sync.

I still fail to comprehend the true power of the package system, perhaps
because of the lack of tools. Is it too naive for someone to look at a
dynamic package system now and port it to later releases (SCAN? The fine
SqueakMap work?)

As for 3.2 fixes, I'd be happy to volunteer to comb 3.2 changes for things
that people feel are 3.2 bugs.  It's a good idea.  And although I haven't
run into them yet, maybe I will in the future.

-Eric





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