On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Keith Hodges <keith_hodges at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>
> The last thing we need is yet another package management system, when we
> have hardly started using the features of the existing ones.

What we need is a package management system that works, *period*.  We
do not need a set of competing package systems that do not quite work.

> Oh yes it is all very well to go and drum up political support for various
> ideas and complain that it will not handle the needs of millions of coders,
> but the reality is that it is a lot of hot air! (see next paragraph)
>
> The packages at lists.squeakfoundation.org list was recently re-rejuvenated to
> address this very issue, and as far as I am aware we had 1 more member
> subscribe to it as a result (and one member left). Hardly a sign of a
> community desparate to actually contribute to make things better for all, do
> you think?

I don't think so.  I think that it is a sign of a community that has
given up on the current packaging systems.

> Furthermore, the goals chosen by the current informal release team is to
> work in ways which will support the disparate communities that are emerging
> based upon squeak. (olpc etoys, sophie, croquet etc) Part of this involves
> championing tools that have been designed to actually work in all squeak
> derivatives.

Squeak errs trying to please all, but that is another discussion.
[snip]
> I think we could re-write SqueakMap to be a front end manager of
> Sake/Packages. If we did this then the dependencies could be managed to
> resolve to the correct data entries. But having said that, who has the time
> to actually do the work.

This, I think, is the crucial problem: who has the time to do the
work?  And having multiple competing systems with no clear best option
just makes matter worse.  Who, say, will work on SqueakMap if it is
going to be replaced by Universes? Who will work in Universes if it is
going to be replaces by Sake packages? And so on...

Hopefully, this thread will result in a project with a leader to see
it through, and not disipate like so many other things in squeak-dev.

For my part, I will try to contribute.  Although my Smalltalk skills
are still pretty limited (and my time much more), I could, for
example, contribute to reimplementing  SquekMap's interface in
Seaside.

Best Regards,

Victor Rodriguez.

> For those highlighting of lack of documentation for Sake/Packages , it is
> true I have had very very little time since writing it... however it DOES
> have class comments, and I have posted numerous examples and emails in the
> past 5 months or so, so you could do worse than search the mail archives for
> my posts.
>
> best regards
>
> Keith
>
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