Igor Stasenko wrote:
> 2008/5/22 K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk at gmail.com>:
>> On Thursday 22 May 2008 4:28:29 am Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>>> Our sources are the .image files. It isn't what people are used to, but
>>> that doesn't make it less true.
>> From the tone of the email, it looks as if Debian maintainer is just trying to
>> understand images and figure out how to handle images in their current
>> version control process.
> 
> Well, from that point, i think we should make it clear , that version
> control of squeak images are totally on under squeak community control
> (release team(s), to be precise). If they find this inappropriate,
> then we have no other choice but not include images in distro and let
> users download them by own.

They want to apply fixes of their own sometimes.  This is what caused 
the recent OpenSSL fiasco, but also has advantages (e.g. patches that go 
in GCC packages are very safe, and the Debian package maintainer for GNU 
Smalltalk also applied this kind of patch when portability problems were 
found).

>> 1. How does one compare two images A and B are equal?
>> 2. If A and B are not equal, how to extract the patch which produced B from A?
>> 3. How does one compare two patch set to see if they are equal?
>> 4. Given an image A and a series of patches P1..PN, can different people apply
>> them in a sequence to produce the 'same' image, B.
>> 5. Is an image file specific to an architecture or not (answer: not)

That's exactly the point.

Images might be the "preferred form for modification", and even the 
"preferred form for distribution" of complete applications (as opposed 
to packages).  But they are a long way from being the "preferred form 
for maintenance", and that's what the Debian maintainers need.

Paolo