[JFDI] no gurus required (was: Serious Squeak (other "survey"))

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Sun Oct 15 17:33:52 UTC 2006


On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 09:46:23AM -0400, Bill Schwab wrote:
> I would be happy to contribute to a formal effort that has some buy-in
> from the appropriate gurus, such that it will be used once it works and
> meets the non-interference constraints they will want. 

Bill,

You don't need any permission or even support from the gurus. As
long as the package you are developing and supporting is released
as a separate package outside of the image (which is exactly what
should be done for most packages, including Zurgle), you can just
go ahead and do it. The only hard part is keeping up with changes
to the core image, and maintaining some level of backward compatibility
with prior versions of the core image (and by the way, this *is*
a fair amount of work, but it's something you have to do regardless).

I am not saying this as an abstract statement. I have been doing
this for years with the OSProcess/CommandShell packages, and it
works just fine. I can change anything I want at any time, without
asking permission from anyone. Nothing that I am doing ever delays
someone else's release schedule, and as long as I release periodic
updates to keep up with the core image, everyone is happy. SqueakMap
and SqueakSource make it much easier to do this nowadays, but the
basic approach worked fine back in the last millenium.

I do hope that you and others will be able to reenergize Zurgle
and BobsUI, because I think that these are really worthwhile
things. I don't personally have the time or energy to help, but
I'll cheer from the sidelines if you can do it.

Dave




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