Ned Konz <ned at bike-nomad.com> wrote:
[BIG SNIP]
> I think part of the problem now is one of ownership. As we transition 
> to the new model -- a model in which more and more of the image we 
> know now gets separated into loadable packages -- I think it's going 
> to be extremely important to get people responsible for each package. 

YES. BIG YES. Let me underline that once more: YES.

And perhaps we should discuss this part in another thread. I want people
to "take ownership" of parts of the image. I could even go as far as
having an owner of the Collection hierarchy etc. Personal "ownership" is
a very powerful force, and with it comes willingness to take
responsibility.

> Once there's someone to point to, and an identifiable artifact, I 
> think it's easier to get documentation done.

Definitely. When I can email the maintainer of package X and ask him -
hey, where are your class comments? Very big difference.

It also opens up possibilities of rating packages, blessing packages as
"base Squeak fundamental packages" and thus requiring much higher
standards in code and documentation etc.

> In this case, the whole Active Book part of the image should probably 
> become a separate package. If it's important to people, perhaps we 

Of course. That goes without saying! EVERYTHING will be a separate
package in the future. The base image IS DEAD. It just happens to linger
on a while until we get it chopped up into packages... :-)

> can get volunteers to maintain and document it. If it's not 
> important, it will suffer code rot as the rest of Squeak changes 
> around it. Which happens now in the monolithic image, of course; it's 
> just that it'll be more visible when we can see the bounds of the 
> packages.

This is where tying documentation to the unit tests come into the
picture. Which of course requires unit tests to begin with. ;-)

regards, Göran