[This message is also available on the blog at
http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/a-new-community-development-model/]

In the board meeting today we had a nice discussion about how to move 
forward with a new community development model for Squeak. Here is an 
overview of the model and what will happen next:

The goals
---------

The goal of this process is to get rid of as many hurdles as possible in 
the contribution process. We are trying to enable the community at large 
to improve Squeak, the core of the system and its supporting libraries.

To do this, we are adopting processes that have been shown to work in 
commercial settings: The use of Monticello as the primary source code 
management system, free access for the developers to the main 
repositories, an incremental update process for both developers and 
users of Squeak.

Repositories
------------

We will be setting up the following Monticello repositories:

* http://source.squeak.org/trunk

This will be the main repository for ongoing development. New code will 
be committed here, the repository will be world-readable and writable 
for the core-dev group.

* http://source.squeak.org/tests

This is the main repository for unit tests. It will be world-readable 
AND world-writable. We encourage everyone to write more tests and commit 
them, improve the existing tests and bring in entirely new test suites.

* http://source.squeak.org/inbox

This repository is intended as dropbox. It’s usage will depend on what 
we make it out to be. The idea is to have it world-readable and 
world-writable, too.

Developer access
----------------

The board will manage developer access to the repositories at 
source.squeak.org. In the next days we’ll send out a few “you are 
pre-approved” messages to people who have proven to be active developers 
in the past in order to invite them to become a core developer.

If you can’t wait and absolutely want to be in on the action you can 
register yourself at http://source.squeak.org/ and send message to the 
board asking for access but most of the regular contributors (you know 
who you are) will be invited anyway.

Rules of Engagement
-------------------

If you have used Monticello in projects with more than two developers in 
the past you already know the drill. If not, here are some useful 
guidelines:

* Merge often. In particular when you pick up work and right before you 
intend to commit.

* Exercise caution. This is a running system and breaking it needlessly 
is generally frowned upon.

* Restrain yourself. Getting developer access doesn’t mean you are free 
to put in every pet extension you always wanted to have without discussion.

* If in doubt, ask. This is the corollary to the restrain yourself rule. 
You’re not under pressure to ship a product, so you have the time to 
send a note saying “hey, I’m planning to fix this old issue and it may 
have some side effect here or there. Anyone having a problem with that?”

 >>> I’ll add a Squeak-dev exception here: Any response from any 
non-developer can be entirely ignored in this context.

* You break it, you fix it. If you change something you are generally 
expected to take care of the consequences, though there are some 
exceptions. If in doubt, ask ;-)

* Do good and talk about it. When you’re done with whatever it is you’ve 
been working on let people know about it. It can be as short as a note 
to Squeak-dev saying “hey, some of you might care that I’ve fixed the 
long standing bug with xyz. Update and enjoy”

I think that roughly covers it. Basically you will be working with a 
dozen (hopefully more) other developers on Squeak and we’ll all have to 
learn how to make this work successfully.

Updating
--------
We are in the process of developing an update process that can work 
seamlessly with Monticello. An early experiment is described here[1]. We 
are evaluating alternative approaches, in particular the use of 
Installer since there are some shortcomings when using Monticello 
Configurations.

[1]http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2009-July/136870.html

Existing Work
-------------
It is important to note that we will be trying very hard not to lose any 
work that is being done for Squeak 3.11. We will start with the package 
set that was used in the 3.10 release, then we will issue package 
updates to cover the missing delta up until 3.10.2. Following which we 
will reissue any changes done for 3.11 into the repositories.