Need to do something
Avi Bryant
avi.bryant at gmail.com
Thu Oct 13 18:41:21 UTC 2005
On Oct 13, 2005, at 10:32 AM, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
> Note that the work needed to be able to share packages is exactly
> the work required to make the update stream work - create a series
> of loadable package versions that get (any image) from here to there.
>
> This is what makes the whole "images vs updates" thread pretty much
> bogus in my eyes. If we stop doing this work for some package, and
> just patch things up, we will probably never share that code with
> any other image-lines that want to keep their own images.
We don't yet have an update script that can take an arbitrary image
and load Traits into it. Does that mean it's impossible to share
Traits with any image line other than the one it was developed in?
Of course not. There are manual ways for an experienced developer to
integrate Traits into whatever image I give them. There may be
challenges unique to any particular image, but they would certainly
be solvable. And once solved, it's very likely that any further
updates to Traits - loading new versions of the various Traits
packages - would be much easier. Maybe still a manual process in
some cases, but easy enough that it could be done at regular
intervals. And anyone who was a client of that image line would get
that integration for free, by downloading the newly integrated image.
Capturing easy integrations with scripts is easy. Capturing hard
integrations with images is easy. Capturing hard integrations with
scripts is hard. If we bias towards the first two rather than the
third, we have more energy for writing interesting code to
integrate. What's bogus about that?
I enjoy solving hard problems, but not for their own sake. If I can
see a way to be lazy and avoid them, I take it every time...
Avi
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