[squeak-dev] Re: What is Squeak

Keith Hodges keith_hodges at yahoo.co.uk
Sun Dec 7 18:05:16 UTC 2008


>>>
>>> Scripting people always could script it if they wish.
>>>
>> and Image tweaking people can always Image tweak if they wish. But their
>> work is more difficult to harness and cross fertilize between forks and
>> different sectors of the community. They have no ethos of desiring it to
>> be possible, and no means to transact it.
>
> If you mean the Etoys image with that comment - we simply chose the
> most efficient way for 
Not at all, "image tweaking" is the standard way of doing things, and it
is the most efficient way of developing an end product. No pesky scm,
packaging and module distribution issues.

All release teams, pharo, edgar etoys, croquet, etc have been moving
forward by imcrementally changing the image. (Sophie had a build
process, as does Gjallar)

All 3.11 aims to do differently is to increment the image in larger
discrete (but not two big) crafted steps, that forks can potentially share.
> us to deliver. We were 5 people, most of them not even working
> full-time on Etoys. We have an installed user base of at least
> 500,000. We have to be careful about backwards compatibility. Doing
> this while trying to keep in sync through 3.9, 3.10, etc., would
> frankly have put the whole project in jeopardy.
Quite right. That illustrates my point, working with a moving target is
not easy, and not desirable.
> OTOH we tried to break out the separable functionality so it can be
> used in other projects - e.g., the DBus support, GStreamer support,
> which are maintained as Monticello packages.
>
> I for one would love to see Etoys being maintained in sync with (or
> even inside) the squeak.org version, and now that the pace of
> development has slowed down on the Etoys side this might even be
> feasible. However, since Etoys never was a community-driven
> scratch-your-own-itch project, somebody would have to come forward
> declaring it his own itch (like Marcus and Michael did in 3.8).
> Recently I've only seen Edgar express interest in that direction.
That's why it is such a shame that Edgar will not come out and play
today, and believe me I have tried.
>
> I like your vision, and the progress you are making :)
>
Thanks... I trust we can pull this off.

Keith

p.s. Rob - I do seaside mostly, and interfacing to business accounts. 






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