[squeak-dev] Squeak 4.x should adopt Pharo 1.0

Keith Hodges keith_hodges at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Aug 10 20:07:32 UTC 2009


Dear All,

As far as I see it the only sensible way ahead for squeak 3.11 is to
adopt Pharo 1.0 as the next base version of squeak (i.e. 4.0), and to
begin a series of initiatives to promote compatibility with squeak
pieces that pharo doesn't support.

The previous squeak 3.11 vision accepted, and now rejected, by the
squeak board was to develop a process that would allow squeak to harvest
the contributions of all the other forks, or other major initiatives,
and for significant contributions to be shared by all the forks.

All of a sudden there was an "oh no pharo is ahead of us" panic that
ensued last month as a result of new squeak-dev people that were not
involved in, nor seemed aware of the goals of the 3.11 process. Within
this process Pharo may simply be viewed as a research project carried
out on behalf of the wider squeak community, that will be harvestable in
good time.

However now that this idea is no longer going to be developed, we need
to limit the number of diverging active forks as much as possible,
rather than creating new ones ("trunk" makes the problem worse not
better). Once the output of "trunk" is released in whatever form we will
then have yet another base image to manage code for, and I don't think
that that is an acceptable outcome.

When it comes to the elections next year, if there is anyone who would
like to run on the "Squeak to adopt Pharo" ticket, then I will vote for
them.

best regards

Keith

p.p.s. Bob is not going to be released as open source, if you would like
the ability to build your images daily, and run the test suites against
your deliverables, then please do email me for licensing terms.



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