Hi Göran,

Just a few random thoughts on the problem since I don't have any
definitive answers. First of all, I think I agree with Les (or whoever
said it) that at least I grossly underestimated the task at hand. I
believe that we've been shooting for the whole cake which turned out to
be too big a bite for all of us to chew in a single piece. I have always
liked (I still do) the general approach that Henrik took due to its nice
algebraic properties ... but there's not enough immediate payoff if the
problem is only solved "abstractly" rather than "concretely".

The way I see it, right now there is this big gap between "what you used
to be able to do" in 3.2 and what you can do in 3.3alpha. While all of
the things that have been done may be "abstractly correct" (like
removing categories and pools) they are a big concrete problem for
anyone actually trying to make the transition. Also, there's this
problem that at this point there is not a single concrete advantage for
anyone actually using the module system - it's still in an abstract
place in the future where "everything is going to get better" etc.

Re: Complexity. I entirely agree with Daniel - like I was saying above
the 3.3alpha module system is "abstractly nice" but if you go through
the actual code it's pretty darn complex to understand and to handle.
None of which I would claim is anyone's fault in particular since there
are lots of complexities in Squeak itself which require even more
complexities in handling them.

BTW, I am _very_ impressed with the work that Avi has done on DVS. In a
way, the exact opposite of the module system in 3.3a - it's very simple,
works well for what it does, integrates with anything coming from 3.2,
serves a specific purpose, has an immediate payoff. Excellent work.

But like I was saying, don't expect any answers from me. I certainly
agree with your point of view as well that simply "because it's there"
we _should_ be using the module system of 3.3alpha - but how?! The
problem is that it is kinda like a "single chunk of complexity" where
trying to solve/fix any single problem (like name spaces, load/unload,
repositories, CM tools etc) "automatically" requires you to deal with
all of the other aspects as well.

Cheers,
  - Andreas