Hi Marcus!

Marcus Denker <denker at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> On 30.03.2006, at 14:53, goran at krampe.se wrote:
> >> and SqueakMap is broken for 3 Months.
> >
> > "broken" is a bit harsh - yes, it flunks in the current 3.9alpha or
> > beta, but not in 3.8 AFAIK.
> >
> > Now, if/when you fix it btw - make sure that the "SqueakMap" package
> > (the script) picks the correct release of base and also - check that
> > your fix works back in 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 too.
> >
> 
> Is this reasonable? One codebase for all Squeak versions? I mean, this

It has worked so far - and no, not for *all* versions, but from 3.5 I
think. :)

> would imply to add code that tests if the deprecated method has been
> removed or not, or it would not to test for the version (if version  
> X, call method
> Y, else method Z). This is bound to become very messy over time...

Well, it seems that *in practice* it doesn't get *that* hairy - SM
mostly uses "vanilla code" in the image.

> Wouldn't it make more sense to freeze the external packages with the  
> release
> (to be developed much more cautiously) while forking a new unstable  
> branch
> for the new unstabe Squeak release?

I am not sure I parsed what you wrote - but I am guessing that, yes,
when it gets too hairy the principal idea is of course to "branch" like
you describe BUT... there is one "small" catch. SM is a client server
system where we synhronize the model by transferring it in an
ImageSegment to the clients and smacking it in. In short - having
different client side code running against a server with... the latest
code? Well, as you can imaging *that* gets hairy much faster I think :).

Also just trying to maintain different forks for different Squeak
versions (automatically upgrading etc when people try to connect to the
server with old code blabla) is not easy either.

> To be backward compatible in the sense that all new versions of  
> packages in 3.9
> need to work even on old Squeak versions seems to be not really  
> practical...

No, of course not - but as I said - SM is different in the sense that it
has to support older versions of Squeak (right? :)) and it is based on
the ImageSegment approach and also - it seems appropriate that the same
domain code runs on the server as on the clients.

Anyway - the "one line 5 minute fix" doesn't include branching SM for
3.9. :)
 
>         Marcus

regards, Göran

PS. If you don't get around fixing the issue before say in ... 5 hours
then I will fix it - Maya should be asleep then. :) ANd also - there may
be other small things I should fix at the same time, we will see.