Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> writes:
> Brad Fuller wrote:
> > Instead of 'standard packages', what if there was an image
> > consisting of the fundamental classes required -- the basic building
> > blocks for all images.
> 
> This is basically what we have today and it doesn't work. There is too
> much power concentrated in the hands of whoever "owns" that image; it
> *will* get abused for personal / project interests.

Yes, but we do have a messy political process for keeping anything
really perverse from happening.  That process can even be changed, and
surely your recommendations for such changes would have a whole lot of
weight.

Within the existing political process, the thing to do pronto is to
get someone on the Squeak Foundation Board, if you do not already have
someone sufficiently sympathetic.  Additionally, it never hurts to
keep an eye on the current release manager and communicate your
concerns to them, e.g. on which bug fixes to prioritize.


Aside from that, it has been a long stated goal of many volunteers to
separate Squeak into packages, and part of the reason is so that we
can have a non-controversial core and a non-controversial set of
optional but standard packages.  A lot has happened as part of the
3.10 release, as Ralph described.  Thus, the interest is certainly
here, if the technical details work out.


On the technical side, sharing packages would mean Croquet has to play
nice as an extension to a standard core and standard set of packages.
Small deltas from the standard component swould be fine, but big ones
will be a headache.  It looks like a tough engineering call on your
part.  Is the work of making Croquet sit on top of standard Squeak,
low enough that there is a net payoff from automatically inheriting
fixes to the standard image?


Lex