update stream policy
Julian Fitzell
julian at beta4.com
Sun Jan 18 18:04:41 UTC 2004
Ned Konz wrote:
> On Sunday 18 January 2004 7:27 am, ducasse wrote:
>
>>By the way the starting point was about having Tests (the active and
>>always synchronised
>>documentation) close to the code they document in the image for the
>>image. For the package
>>each maintainer has to care of the tests related to his stuff.
>
>
> But "close to the code" doesn't have to mean "shipped as part of the
> distribution image itself". We have a number of mechanisms for making content
> (including tests) available; I don't think that released images themselves
> need to contain tests.
>
> After all, only a small part of the Squeak community is programmers.
Right. This is what I was saying to Stef in the previous thread a few
weeks ago. "I want to tests to be easily available" is a goal. "I want
to tests to be easily available by being in the distributed image" seems
to me to be a goal combined with a possible solution. If we can step
back from the possible solution and just look at the goal, then we can
work to figure out what other solutions might meet that goal.
This may mean better tool support, adding obvious menu links to get the
tests, etc, etc. The problem is, I'm still not clear *exactly* what the
goal is, and so it's hard to determine whether any particular approach
is actually an acceptable solution.
For example, I *think* the goal is something like "All developers should
have very easy access to all the tests for the image. While working on
code, they should be able to access the individual tests that exercise
that code. It should be very easy for these developers to modify or add
tests and publish them back to the community. It should also be easy
(or even automatic?) for the published tests to be integrated into
wherever the tests are being kept." Does this seem close to what we're
trying to achieve?
If we can all get clear on what the goal is, then those of us who are
unhappy with the proposed solution can put our efforts towards
suggesting alternatives rather than just wasting bandwidth arguing over
the proposed solution.
> I do think that it may make sense to have tests available in alpha images
> because (presumably) most of the users of alpha images will be programmers.
I would like to see this met by making them "available" in some way
other than putting them in the update stream, but again, let's try to
establish the goal before going any farther.
I've kept out of this discussion until now, because I already had it
with Stef a few weeks ago. I wanted to post this because I think it's a
fine distinction that can get lost in the heat of a debate. If we can
start discussing a goal, then I think we can get some creative minds at
work coming up with a solution that makes everyone happy. If we're just
going to keep debating the one solution of putting things in the image
to make them available, then I think I'll just stand back and watch the
discussion go in circles.
Julian
More information about the Squeak-dev
mailing list
|