Dear Ralph,

	I think movments like the one you are exposing here adds value to the whole Squeak
as project. Also adds value to all Smalltlak as a consequence.

	I'm pretty sure that the projects that will emerge, based on Squeak versions like
that, eventually will gain a lot more value just because of that.
	
	Very healthy initiative.

	If the objetives can be archieved, it can be useful as support of a wisely defined
marketing strategy campaing (just for reference:
http://www.4hb.com/0107flmarketingcampaign.html).

	Cheers,

Sebastian Sastre

ssastre at seaswork.com.ar
Seaswork
Special Software Solutions

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Ralph Johnson
> Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 10:06 AM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: release team proposal
> 
> Here is the proposal I sent to the Squeak board.
> ----------------
> The Squeak 3.10 release team is going to focus on developing 
> a simple, visible and reliable process for creating new releases.
> 
> The alpha 3.10 release will have an image and a set of core packages.
> Each will have a test suite, and all tests in the test suites 
> will pass when any subset of the packages is loaded into the 
> image.  Each subsequent version will continue to keep the 
> existing packages working.
> 
> We expect the alpha release and all later releases to be 
> usable.  We want people to feel comfortable using the latest 
> version so that 3.10 will be heavily used long before the 
> final version and most bugs will be discovered.
> 
> Our plan is to have the alpha release by the end of January 
> and to accept major changes  for the next three months, i.e. 
> til the end of April.  "Major changes" will include moving 
> code from the image into packages and making new core 
> packages.  We are not expecting any major new features in the 
> image.  The last month will be only bug fixes, and a final 
> version of 3.10 will be the end of May.
> 
> The main focus will be on developing a good process for 
> creating releases.  So, we expect to experiment with the 
> process.  Ideally, the final process would be so easy to 
> follow that it would be easy to be in charge of producing a release.
> 
> The current process plan is that all requests for change 
> would go through Mantis.  Each bug fix would have a test that 
> shows the bug and that shows that it is fixed.  The release 
> team would periodically (once or twice a week, perhaps every 
> day) go through Mantis, test each change to make sure it 
> doesn't break anything, and commit them to the current release.
> 
> The releases would be distributed in several ways.
> There will be a "package universe" of all the core packages, 
> and perhaps one of non-core packages, as well. There will be 
> an update server so that people do not have to load new 
> images to stay up to date.  There will be a Montecello  
> repository of all the changes so that everything we do will 
> be repeatable.
> We will try to make it easy for people to use the release 
> that is under active development.
> 
> Current members of the release team are Ralph Johnson and 
> Edgar J. De Cleeene.
> --------------
> Reading it again, I can think of some comments.
> 
> The main one is that this is explaining what the Squeak team 
> will do, which is to develop a process for making releases 
> and shrinking the image.  Part of the process is making it 
> easy for other people to fix bugs and add features.  I am not 
> opposed to adding features!
> You could think that from this proposal. I just think that 
> adding features should be what everybody does, not just the 
> release team.
> 
> As part of fixing the process, a large part of my job will be 
> getting people to participate.  I expect that the social 
> engineering will be more work than the software engineering.  
> The software engineering is, in my opinion, very standard and 
> routine, though I am sure I will get some argument about 
> that.  The social engineering will require more creativity.
> 
> -Ralph
>