[squeak-dev] Cog binary + cogdeb.zip = Cog.deb

Frank Shearar frank.shearar at gmail.com
Wed Jun 18 12:49:15 UTC 2014


On 18 June 2014 00:19, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 07:00:30PM -0400, Tony Garnock-Jones wrote:
>> On 2014-06-17 6:56 PM, David T. Lewis wrote:
>> > Generating VM builds for general distribution on build.squeak.org is a Really
>> > Bad Idea. Please do not do that.
>>
>> Can you expand on this, please? Why is it such a Very Bad Idea?
>>
>
> The authors and maintainers of the VMs for various platforms put a lot
> of time and effort into producing reliable products, and in trying to do
> so in such a way that they have some reasonable chance of answering questions
> when things do not work. Setting up a random bunch of undocumented and unsupported
> variations on those VMs makes life difficult for the people who are creating
> and supporting them, and especially so if those undocumented distributions
> are being served from a site that has "squeak.org" in its name.

Using CI is exactly the opposite of "random", particularly if the
scripts that generate these artifacts are themselves blessed by said
VM maintainers.

Also, build.squeak.org doesn't produce artifacts for "general
distribution". I think anyone downloading an artifact from a CI server
and then complaining that the thing's not reliable gets exactly what's
coming to them: either they're prepared to test an alpha quality
thing, or we should tell them where to download the officially
supported versions.

What I don't want is for VM maintainers to have to waste their time
building things that a computer can do for them. Ideally, for
instance, I'd like to see a test that takes a brand new Cog VM, buids
a deb, installs that deb on a clean machine, and fires up an
officially sanctioned Squeak image (and Pharo, and Cuis, and NewSpeak
images for that matter). That way we can know that the deb actually
works.

> It's great to experiment, but let's have some consideration for the authors
> and maintainers of the VMs, and let's be careful that the things that we
> present to the world on squeak.org have real credibility and the best possible
> support.

I'm not sure how creating a deb automatically means disrespecting VM
maintainers. Why is credibility an issue? "Hey something broken in
this alpha version of a VM" says Random Newbie "Well if you can't
handle gdb, don't do that." says VM Maintainer. Producing these easily
consumed artifacts ought to help get more VM testers testing things,
instead of asking them to download source and learn the necessary
incantations.

I do deeply appreciate that VM maintainers jump through a great many
hoops in their work: Iam Piumarta keeps a whole pile of machines
running arcane OSes so he can test the Interpreter VM, for instance.

I just don't see why automating tedious tasks causes big problems.

frank

> Dave


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