New FileSystem

Hannes Hirzel hirzel at spw.unizh.ch
Sat Dec 18 06:37:35 UTC 2004


Avi Bryant wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 11:00:49 -0800, Tim Rowledge
> <tim at sumeru.stanford.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Flow is A Good Thing. As always, the hard part is persuading a large
>>group of people to adopt something new, especially since it is a
>>replacement not an add on..
....
> 
> 
> the way to get people to adopt Flow is to make it
> possible for them to use it side by side with the existing streams, so
> that they can migrate to it incrementally without anything needing to
> be broken during the process.  

> All this means, I think, is prefixing
> Flow's classes so that they can coexist in the image with the old
> Stream implementation.  


> Yes, there's something aesthetically
> unpleasing about having FlowStream or FStream instead of just Stream,
> but if adoption is actually a goal it seems a small price to pay.
> 
> Avi
> 

I fully agree (100%). If Flow would be available as a package on
SqueakMap compatible with 3.8 (with the class names prefixed) I would
start using it right away. And my old code would still work. As I gain
confidence in the New File System I can port the code gradually.

When Craig first released it in  1998 I was not in a position to choose
without the risk of having porting issues every time a new version of
Squeak comes out.

Today with a package system in place it is up to the individual
developer to choose if he wants to use a package to build on or not. Of
course this depends on the level of confidence that  versions will be
maintainded to be compatible with future Squeak core releases.


Hannes





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