Hi Keith,

>> Do any of you have ideas how to respond? Are there perhaps other
>> Debian packages that have a similar issue of accountability?
>> 
>> And how hard would it actually be to bootstrap a fresh Squeak image
>> from sources nowadays?

Not sure if this is any use - but in Dolphin I take the basic image and I 
call it with a command line parameter that indicates a root package to load 
from the file system (so called .pac files) - the loader then starts loading 
the package and all its dependencies checking for any errors that occur (if 
they do it fails startup) - it then begines a deployment routine to generate 
a .exe

I am wondering if the Debian guys might go for a super slim image in sqeuak 
which they have "blessed" and then you have a loader that reads in .mcz files 
to build up the rest of the more complete system. As mcz files are just zips 
that people could extract and diff - this might overcome there nervousness 
about future versions being difficult to compare for changes. On load completion 
you save a "development" image which can be used over and over again (as 
we have now).

Again, not sure if this is what the trouble is - but it might work.

Tim