Hi all,


I've noticed that condensing sources is on the todo
list of the 3dot9 gamma push.

One of the deliverables with 3dot9 final should be a
3.10 with all changes from 3.0.

As one who looks into squeak code for understanding I
have found that the full version history really speeds
tracking down bugs. Often it is the only good way to
discover the programers intent. It is also important
to know how many have mucked in a particular piece of
code. A large number of cooks is one of the smell
tests for troubled code.

So I am very concerned that 3.9 gamma might lose all
this information when the sources get created anew.

It seems to me poor timing to do it at the end of the
development cycle.

A better plan IMHO would be to bring out 3.9 without
compressing the sources.

Then compress sources as the first (and possibly last
step) of a 3.10.

If you choose to do only source compression for 3.10
you would have an adoptable squeak; and a fall back to
3.9 with the full history around for maintainence
sake.

With both 3.9 and 3.10 representing the same point of
development you would not have to do 3.9 full. You
would do 3.10 full. And if you ran into problems you
could check it against 3.9 full and get your insights
that way.

That makes more sense. The numbering even suggest a
major point. (Or you could call the compressed source
version 4.0 and let the spoon version be 5.0).

I believe a great deal of code will rot and squeak
will become a lot more fragile than it already is if
you compress sources now before 3.9 is finalized.

Thank you for your attention to these concerns.

Yours in service, -- Jerome Peace

"Version numbers are cheap. It is patience that is
precious."







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