On 19.04.2009, at 18:48, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:

> On Sunday 19 April 2009 8:11:17 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> I'm
>> just saying we should not sit and wait until 4.0 is done, but make  
>> the
>> distro contacts now, let the VM packages pave the way.
> It is the image package which is installed. It would pull in VM as a
> dependency. Of course, the image could also come in as a file, but I  
> would
> think that wouldn't be a complete case.
>
> Am I missing something here? It has been a long day. I sure feel  
> dense :-(


My point is that Squeak developers all use their own images anyway.  
Most of them do only care about the VM to the point that they expect  
it to work. More importantly, they lack the skill to make the VM work.  
So the VM is the part of Squeak that is most needed to be pre-compiled  
and packaged. It's also the hardest part because of various  
dependencies on architecture, libraries etc.

I'm not saying images should not be packaged. I'm just advocating to  
start with the VM, for the various reasons I mentioned before (need,  
utility, difficulty, licensing). It for now would solve the hardest  
problem.

Note I'm not talking about packages available at squeak.org (which of  
course should package everything) but about the packages to become  
proper part of the various distros.

- Bert -