Michael Rueger <michael at squeakland.org> wrote:
> Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> 
> Below is MHO from painful real life experience ;-)
> 
> > I expect to use only the Full image.
> > What am I supposed to do about updates?
> > - Can I be confident that updates to the Base image won't break the
> >   packages in the Full image?
> 
> No. And actually that is not much of a change as updates in the alpha 
> (anybody remember why it is called *alpha*) update stream did break 
> stuff before. When somebody complained, then it was fixed.

I agree with Michael, there is no change in practice I think. If a
package isn't being used then it isn't being tested - regardless if it
is in the image or not.

BUT... paradoxically enough :-) it may turn out the opposite. Now when
the development of the base image actually takes packages outside of the
image into account (which wasn't really happening before) it may turn
out better. For example, we have just introduce the concept of
deprecation which wasn't even there before! And other mechanisms will
probably follow - like say a global senders catalog. Which somebody can
implement kindof easily when SM2 comes.

> > - Can I be confident that updates to the Base image will have been
> >   *tested* with all the packages in the Full image, and that updates
> >   will check for the presence of packages they are incompatible with,
> >   so that I will be warned about and allowed to cancel an update that
> >   might break the Full image?
> 
> No, no, and not really doable in practice. Even MS with their gazillions 
> of testers fails to achieve this.

You should be confident that the updates at least "load" in a Full
image. I think Doug or whoever is in charge of the updatestream will
ensure that at least. And perhaps he may also run the available Unit
tests for the Base image that Marcus maintains. And perhaps even
existing unit tests for the packages in Full (are there any yet for the
famous 9?).

But no manual testing will be performed - no time for that. Again, Doug
can tell you how much of the above he does today before pushing it out.
 
> > - Will packages that are not part of the Base image also have some
> >   kind of update stream, or will they only be replaced in toto on
> >   SqueakMap?
> 
> That is very much up in the air right now, part of the reason for the 
> many messages that have been flying around.

Yes, this is in the air. I assume you mean the official Squeak packages
(currently the famous 9) and not *all* packages on SM. I also assume
that we will decide on a common strategy for these packages. But we
haven't done so yet. Andreas has made a hack available for setting up
updatestreams per packages that works with SM1. SM2 will include some
fields for this.

But perhaps we will instead choose to use Monticello for these packages
and not "stream of a bunch of ChangeSets" at all.

> > - Is there _anything_ I can do to keep a Full Squeak current, or do
> >   I just jump from official release to official release?
> > 
> > To be perfectly honest, I have hitherto *preferred* "wait for the next
> > stable release" to "keep quite current", but I have been feeling a bit
> > guilty about that, because it's one of the main reasons why I haven't
> > done any bug fix testing.  The fact that a bug fix seems to work in my
> > image does NOT imply that it works in a fully patched image, so I've
> > felt that any bug testing I did would have been pointless.
> 
> So in practice not much is going to change for you then? ;-)
> Seriously, I've also preferred to not update while I'm in the middle of 
> some development and the squeakland plugin image is also getting new 
> releases twice a year at the most.
> As I said, the update stream is called alpha for a reason.

If you want to keep up with alpha/beta/gamma streams then just go ahead.
The stream is there for a reason. But it is currently not only used as a
general update mecanism for a stable release.

> All very good and valid points raised in your questions!
> 
> Michael

regards, Göran