Here's a progress report on what the Version 3.9 Team has been up to
recently.

We've been involed in an active discussion on the Packages team mailing
list about a partitioning of the 3.8 image into packages, using the
Impara iSqueak approach discussed briefly on squeak-dev.  This will have
a huge impact on how the 3.9 release proceeds, of course, so most other
3.9 activities are on hold until this is resolved.  To read the
discussion, see:
http://discuss.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?10

It looks like we will probably proceed with some variant of this plan
for 3.9alpha.  This will basically mean that the Squeak 3.9alpha image
will no longer be updated via an update stream comprised purely of
traditional changesets, which contain primarily code changes and the
occasional do-it.  All of the code in the image would be assigned to a
set of Monticello packages.  "Loading updates" in a 3.9alpha image would
instead typically merely update to the latest version of each package in
the release repository.  However, on occasion if a do-it is needed to
load code in a certain order or massage instances in the image, those
would still be done via the update stream, along with a "config map"
specifying a certain set of packages to load.  See the iSqueak thread on
squeak-dev and on the Packages mailing list for more details.

So, we are trying to proceed with this.  At this point the next step is
to set up the "3.9 Release" Monticello repository, which will probably
be the SqueakSource repository at Berne.  This is currently waiting on a
new server.

Note that doing this almost certainly means that 3.9alpha will be
"starting over" from 3.8 final.  There is an existing 3.9alpha update
stream with some enhancements in it (although not that many), but this
will likely be abandoned.  This is for a few reasons:

1. The initial iSqueak package partitioning was done with a 3.8 final
image, we'd like to use this as a starting point and not have to try to
re-do the partitioning in the existing 3.9alpha image.

2. The final AbstractString cleanup was only done in 3.8 final, not in
3.9alpha, and we'd rather not have to re-do that either.

3. There have been some concerns about the UI performance with the
Smallland changes made in the 3.9alpha stream.  Since these haven't been
addressed, there is some preference for reverting these changes.

If we abandon the previous 3.9alpha stream, it will probably be renamed
to something like "3.9alphaold" in the master updates.list file, so that
the history is still there, but it's no longer active.  We'll then start
over with a new "3.9alpha" stream, which can be updated to from 3.8final
with a do-it.

There are some other enhancements in the old 3.9alpha stream which we
don't want to lose... we'll need to back-port those into the new
package-ized 3.9alpha stream.

Of course, we want to get all of this going fairly soon, as harvesting
for 3.9 is pretty much at a stand-still until the new 3.9 process is
started.  (Harvesting can still proceed for the 3.8.x series of
releases, though.)

On a side note, once we get this going, we may want to create a
Harvesting team with its own team leader.  The Janitors team and the
V3.9 team are both important, but they don't really cover everything in
the harvesting process.  Or, the Janitors team could also take on some
harvesting duties.

There is also a swiki page for V3.9 at
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5645 , which lists some of the
potential large content items for 3.9, once we get the above process
working.  The timing for the final release will probably be 5-6 months
from the time the new process is working, unless something else comes
up, such as coordination with some other release.

- Doug