Goran

I think that we will never have 3.9 for june but for October. Because I 
see how days are passing fast.

Stef

> Hi everyone!
>
> This *unofficial* report is just to keep everyone a bit updated.
> Unofficial means that this report is written by me personally and the
> other Coordinators (Doug, Marcus, Cees) haven't read it and may 
> disagree
> :).
>
> Things in this report:
>
> 1. Squeak 3.8 Real Soon Now. :)
> 2. Teams churning.
> 3. The planning of 3.9 and beyond.
> 4. New VMs! 64 bits here we come!
>
>
> Squeak 3.8
> -------------
> The release has now slipped a whole month, but hey :), Michael Rueger
> will hopefully soon get it out. AFAIK it is ready to go and only some
> image last-minute-preparation is left to do. Michael? Stressed out? ;)
>
> Teams
> -------
> We now have a bunch of Teams working on separate tasks (see
> http://anakin.bluefish.se/castaways/6) , and the team model seems quite
> promising so far. The teams all have their own mailinglists so a lot of
> that traffic has left squeak-dev - so don't be fooled and think things
> aren't moving along.
>
> The following is my personal possibly incorrect :) perception of what 
> is
> happening in the Teams at the moment (feel free to correct me guys). I
> am not following all teams, but have skimmed the mls of those I don't
> follow:
>
> 	- WebSite (9 subscried to ml). This team has set up a Smallwiki for
> collaboration on box1 and seems to be starting to itch to get the new
> website deployed, but I have not yet seen the current version (I think
> it is temporarily offline). Looking forward to it though!
>
> 	- MorphicSplitters (15 subscribed to ml). Seems to be lots of activity
> by looking at the ml acrhive. This team is also quite busy exploring
> tools for doing analysis, including Dan's code and Daniel Vainsenchers
> MudPie. Juan Vuletich seems to be the main heavylifter at the moment 
> and
> wow, I look forward to see what comes out of this team!
>
> 	- ToolBuilder (32 subscribed to ml). This project started out with a
> bang, but the ml has been mostly silent during march. I don't think 
> that
> means anything in particular but I personally look forward to get
> ToolBuilder installed as a package in Basic in the 3.9 alpha stream
> ASAP, Brian, you hear me? :) The reasoning for that is to make the API
> available for all of us so that we can start to program against it 
> under
> 3.9 which in turn is important because in later releases (4.0 or 4.1 or
> whatever) Morphic will turn into a package (MorphicSplitters) and then
> tools that hasn't been ported to using ToolBuilder will become
> inoperational without Morphic installed.
>
> 	- Packages (25 subscribed to ml). This is a team I am part of and we
> have made some initial deicisons (for example to use PackageInfo as it
> stands today) and also discussed and decided on a way on how SqueakMap
> and Universes can be united/merged/whatever. For details on that, check
> the archive. Avi has also created a page on the Swiki where Squeakers
> can sign up if interested in helping with splitting out or maintaining
> (or co-maintaining) a part of current Squeak Basic
> (http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5641). Please people, go there and
> sign up! The actual "doing it" hasn't begun yet, but I feel it will
> soon. Avi? Whaddayasay, time to push some PIs into 3.9alpha? :)
>
> 	- Modules (51 subscribed to ml). This team is led by Dan Ingalls and 
> is
> focused on delivering a module system "for tomorrow". The team started
> with a very good inventory of available technology and ideas
> (http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5608) and is now moving over from
> analysis to synthesis. :) It will be interesting to see what happens 
> now
> - IMHO there are a LOT of different aspects here, and to find common
> ground can get real tricksy. But I have trust in Dan. ;) The inventory
> in itself is a very good part way result and you can learn a lot just 
> by
> reading those.
>
> 	- Janitors (11 subscribed to ml). The janitors are doing us a great
> service and with Ken at the helms I feel safe that the process of fixes
> and bugs will gradually move to a better state. One of the things the
> janitors are doing is that they catch all reports and fixes posted to
> squeak-dev and move them over to Mantis. So people, remember, it is
> Mantis we should use from now on. :) The team has also written a good
> guide on how to report stuff in Mantis.
>
> 	- v 3.9 (9 subscribed to ml). Doug Way is the release leader for 3.9
> and there is a plan for it on the Swiki
> (http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5645). The work on 3.9 hasn't 
> kicked
> into gear just yet, but as the teams (Packages, ToolBuilder) get moving
> and we get the Harvesting started again (Janitors, what are your
> thoughts on that? Or Doug?) I think it will pick up. And with Doug
> leading it I am not worried. :) Planned release is in june.
>
> 	- FileArea and Box1Administration are small teams and nothing much to
> report. Box1 seems to be humming along fine and Bruce is doing a great
> job as always keeping the file area up to date. If you haven't noticed
> this is the current place to find Squeak:
> 		http://box1.squeakfoundation.org/files/
> 	...and if you want to mirror it, read:
> 		http://box1.squeakfoundation.org/files/MIRRORING.txt	
>
> In my opinion all teams seem to be doing quite good. The archives of 
> the
> mls are available here: http://discuss.squeakfoundation.org
>
> I don't think we need more teams at the moment - enough work going on 
> to
> keep us all busy - but if there are new teams brewing out there, then
> feel free to contact us Coordinators and see if we can form an official
> team. I know of at least one such team idea that has been discussed.
>
>
> 3.9 and beyond
> -----------------
> The plan for 3.9 is mostly set and 3.9 will turn out as a more or less
> classic Squeak release with the exception of the result from the
> Packages team which makes it different from previous releases. But what
> happens then? What about 4.0 or 4.1? As we described earlier the result
> of MorphicSplitters was meant to go in *first thing* in the release
> after 3.9. Since then the discussion about the new image format was
> brought up - and given that discussion at least I am personally leaning
> towards this plan:
>
> 	4.0 = Let's make a release more or less immediately after 3.9 which is
> identical to 3.9 but with the new image format and related changes. It
> seems like a logical move. Tim? Reasonable? How about max 1 month after
> 3.9, which would mean late july?
>
> 	4.1 = This will then be the release with the result from
> MorphicSplitters and thus we are buying them a little bit more time. 
> The
> plan was to push that stuff in as the first thing and if we open the
> alpha stream of 4.1 after release of 4.0 then that would mean... say 
> 1st
> august? What do the splitters say about that? Sounds doable?
>
> At the moment I can't find the thread discussing this, so please 
> correct
> me if you think the above is wrong.
>
>
> New VMs!
> -----------
> Those of you that track vm-dev (or read the announcement today on
> squeak-dev :)) are aware of that Ian Piumarta has been working hard
> lately.
>
> First we got a fresh release of 3.7 with a fix for the annoying 2Gb bug
> (manifesting as trouble loading ImageSegments (like SqueakMap for
> example) on selected platforms) and some rearrangements in the source
> tree that now includes a full generated default src thus removing the
> need for manually setting up VMMaker if you just want to build a tagged
> release directly from SVN. Very nice work Ian!
>
> Then today - as you saw in his posting "64-bit VMs" - Ian posted that
> the 64-bit stuff finally went into the trunk! Yiha. So there are now
> 64-bit goodness ready for download! Find it all here:
>
> 	http://squeak.hpl.hp.com/squeak64/dist3/
>
> Hmmm, now I just have to find a 64-bit machine to use it on. And let's
> just hope this isn't a 1st april joke. ;)
>
> Over and out, Göran
>