On 16-Dec-2008, at 6:13 PM, Keith Hodges wrote:

> Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:
>>
>> How do I change it to whatever it should be for the official 3.10
>> release?  I.e. what do I type or paste into that field to replace the
>> word "Development"?

So, I still don't know how to get to a proper "release" version of the  
PU to open when I press the "Package Universe Browser" button....

>> Is someone going to fix 3.10.3 so that it uses the right PU?
> No, please don't.
>
> Development is the universe that is currently being updated with the
> latest stuff. Most things in there are tested against 3.9 and 3.10,
> since thats what developers are using, so it is the most maintained.

Sorry, but that's just not reflective of the facts at the moment.

The "Development" PU is stinky peee-yooo!  It's clearly not properly  
tested with even a minimum of attention to conflict avoidance.  It's  
full of old useless garbage (i.e. tons of unnecessary old versions of  
almost every package).  It's got some old junk that won't even work in  
any way at all on 3.10.  It's a worse mess than SqueakMap because  
there's no hint as to what's been actually tested against the release  
being used.

It is of no real use to any beginner -- it's just a way to get people  
to give up and go away.

> Since 3.10 is the current released image then it is in the Development
> Universes that package load dependencies stands the best chance of  
> being
> fixed.
>
> This is what is called a compromise, and we know what needs to be  
> done,
> and that is being done, just not in 3.10


So the compromise is to keep what outsiders see as the one true  
official release full of untested garbage?

I'd say that's more of an outright failure instead of a compromise.

You don't put new users on the bleeding edge.  That's just suicide.

If someone could tell me how to change my "Package Universe Browser"  
button to open a PU browser on the official 3.10 PU so that I could  
see what the official release PU should look like, and give it a go to  
see if I have any better luck with it, then maybe I could have a  
better opinion on whether or not it really would be better to set the  
default PU back to the 3.10 official release PU or not.

If the only workable compromise really is just to try to go forward  
then the best solution for helping new users in the immediate future  
is to do the following:

	1. remove the default "Package Universe Browser" button from the  
3.10.2 and subsequent patch release/updated images.

	2. tell new users (on the main squeak.org page and the downloads page  
and any and all relevant Swiki pages) that they can get all the fun  
stuff from some image like the FunSqueak image, but be careful to only  
recommend the most stable and well tested version, not the bleeding  
edge where just running the unit tests will core dump the whole VM.

	3. set up an email gateway so that the "mail report" button in the  
debugger actually goes somewhere where someone who can do something  
about PU problems will take notice and do something to actually make  
this forward progress.  If I (or anyone else in my position) want to  
help and I use the "mail report" button to try to help by reporting  
problems I encounter, and then as a result I'm told that what I did is  
useless because my report didn't go to the right place then I'm just  
as likely to go away and leave you guys to your own mess.

-- 
					Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc.
					<woods at planix.ca>

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