Bravo!  I'm very excited about the introduction of this process... I
think that it has a great chance to leverage the enthusiasm that has
been demonstrated in the recent discussions about Squeak's vision and
future.  We have smart people who care, we have a better vision of the
modular system that we want than we did in the Squeak Central days, and
now we have a development process that supports the quick turn-around
that is a central part of why we all care about Squeak in the first place.

Thank you, Board!

Cheers,
Josh



Andreas Raab wrote:
> [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.
>