[ANN]A plan for 3.8/4.0... (insert drumroll here)

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Thu Apr 1 21:29:56 UTC 2004


Hi all

Really good. It is nice to see that HP is getting a good group of 
squeakers.

 From the KCP point of view in 3.8 we would like to have:
	- a new class builder, noury is working on that he improved the 
classBuilder test
	- changes all the Smalltalk at: into self class environment at:
	because that way people like us will have the possibility to 
experiment with
	alternatives languages and namespaces.	
	- we will continue to clean for having traits, which will be ready 
soon now (we expect
	to have a first public release for the end of april.

Stef

On 1 avr. 04, at 23:40, goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> There has been something tasty cooking off-list in the Squeak community
> the last few days and it fell upon me to present it to the community at
> large. Which I do gladly. :)
>
> NOTE: The following is my perception, if there is anything wrong here -
> the appropriate people will surely slap me and correct it. :)
>
> ----
>
> As most of you know we just entered 3.7beta and IMHO it looks pretty
> good. The 3.7 release will not be far away and at that time we 
> typically
> open up 3.8alpha. So if there are any Cool Things going on that might
> affect the plan for the upcoming 3.8 and beyond, the timing was "just
> right" to bring it to the table...
>
> And a Cool Thing just happened to drop in! Dan Ingalls has been testing
> the waters for getting the support of the community in spearheading an
> effort for Squeak version 4.0 *including a full 64-bit port* to the 
> IA64
> ("Itanium").
>
> Yup, you heard it right - with the help of Dan we are entering the land
> of terabyte images. :)
>
> And after exchanging a few emails we Guides of course decided to turn
> him down, we don't need no stinking 64 bi... eh, NOT! ;)
>
> The following is a short description of a battle plan for 3.8/4.0 that
> Dan brought forward and that we Guides support (well, I haven't heard
> anyone against):
>
> - Dan will be doing the 64-bit port as part of Alan's group at HP. That
> group also includes a bunch of Squeak heroes.
> - Since a 64-bit port inevitably brings us an image format change this
> will be version 4.0.
> - Of course this will also include most of the pending image format
> changes that have been talked about for 4.0.
>
> There are also (at least) two other important new things banging on the
> Squeak front door:
>
> - Yoshiki's m17n work
> - Anthony's work with full closures
>
> The idea here is a rather aggressive parallell schedule in which the
> current community process continues with 3.8alpha/beta/gamma "business
> as usual" and we bring in m17n etc, and at the same time the V4 team
> with Dan in the lead prepares a migration process that at the end of 
> the
> release cycle can be executed fairly simply to produce the 4.0 version
> from the 3.8 version.
>
> This would then lead us to a simultaneous release of 3.8 (the last of
> version 3) and 4.0 (which should be identical in all but the
> image-format related areas) somewhere in june/july I think.
>
> Just as an icing on the cake Craig Latta is also getting anxious to get
> a part of the action and expressed his intent to try to get the Squat
> work ready for production in time with 4.0 which could mean that a 4.0k
> (kernel) might also be released at the same time!
>
> This was intended as a "short" announcement but turned lengthy. Dan 
> will
> probably post shortly with more specifics, and I think Craig too etc.
> Anyone in the community that wants to participate more actively in 
> these
> projects should of course not hesitate to contact Dan, Craig or any of
> us Guides.
>
> Phew. It looks like a busy spring, doesn't it? But FUN! Hmmm, 
> Itanium...
> well, how hard can an Opteron port be after that, eh?
>
> regards, Göran
>
> PS. Note how I managed to write this posting without any cheezy jokes
> about "The Return of The King" or "The Return of The Jedi" or... eh,
> darn.
>




More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list