Hi,

Needless to say, we've been talking a lot of Squeak at the Smalltalk
conference. Literally from early morning to early morning, on Saturday
:-).

When discussing the immediate future, I promised to write up a small
proposal for the coming versions. Here it is - shoot at it:

Version 3.10 - Implement the Process
===========================
After 3.9, I think it would be a good idea to work on a version that
has as its main goal to implement the community process we have in
place (user -> mantis -> package team -> inbox -> release team,
roughly). The idea is to enhance SqueakMap with Team cards, to link
into Mantis from the image, etcetera, so that at least User and
Package Team can work with "single button presses". Some typical use
cases:

User: "Submit bug report". SqueakMap is used to find out what team
maintains the code that the user has patched. The team card in SM can
have stuff like the name of the Mantis category matching the Team's
bugs, the format the team prefers (changeset, .mcz or .mcd file, ...),
the place to send it to (a mail address, an MC repository, ...),
etcetera. The user gets a simple form containing most of the stuff
Mantis also asks for, and then the package submits the bug to Mantis.
As simple as the old method of mailing a bug or patch to the list, but
asking for more details in order to raise the quality of bug reports
and patches.

Team member: "Work as member of...". The SM card is fetched, and from
here maybe a little control panel is created that can fetch the next
bug report from Mantis ("Next" being defined as some heuristic over
age and severity, for example), automagically file in any attached
patch, and when done does a sort of transaction over mantis and the
team repository, closing the bug and committing to the team repository
with links in both Mantis and MC to each other.

Also, 3.10 could be the first version that is developed update stream-less.

Version 4.0: Brave New World
======================
After 3.10, and probably starting right away given the length of time
discussions are likely to take place ;-), version 4.0 will especially
integrate changes that will effect image format. Whatever they may be
- there's a long list of wishes, and the team lead should first and
foremost come up with a community process to turn the list of wishes
into a todo list.