On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:

> I don't know whether usage of DVS should be mandatory - I think usage
> of PackageInfo should be. But I definitely think that PackageInfo, DVS
> and SM are things anybody interested in Squeaks future would do well
> to take a serious look at. Not for the specific implementation, but for
> the implications on what we're capable of.

I'd like to emphatically second this - DVS is just one system for getting
packages in and out of an image, PackageInfo is the crucial bit, because
it is what allows you to unambiguously specify what piece of code is in
which package.  There's lots of useful stuff you can do with that
information once it's there, including:

- Exporting a package as a namespaced VW5 changeset
(I have code to do this)
- Performing dependency analysis using Daniel's MudPie
- Using DVS to produce changesets between two complete versions of a
package
- Using Monticello to integrate with versioning systems, including
in-image diffing, patching, merging, conflict resolution, dependency
analysis, etc...
- Browsing by packages instead of by categories (I posted a silly example
of such a browser a few days back)

If a proper module system ever appears again, it would also be trivial to
translate PackageInfo-compliant code to be used with that.

Cheers,
Avi