> On Sep 12, 2015, at 3:29 PM, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Sep 12, 2015 at 10:51:20PM +0200, Nicolai Hess wrote:
>> 2015-09-11 11:06 GMT+02:00 Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com>:
>> 
>>>> On 11 September 2015 at 09:38, Nicolai Hess <nicolaihess at web.de> wrote:
>>>> anyone maintaining the bugtracker entries?
>>>> I would like to close some issues (reported by me).
>>> 
>>> Feel free to do so!
>>> 
>>>> btw should I continue reporting bugs to the bugtracker, or should
>>>> I use the ML only?
>>> 
>>> Please do continue to report issues to the bugtracker.
>> 
>> Ok, but maybe I will send the reports to the ML as well. The last time
>> I reported some issues on the bugtracker for the upcoming releases,
>> they didn't not get much attentions.
> 
> I think you are right to do that. The bug tracker is important for issues
> that may not be easily resolved, or that may require the cooperation of
> several people for resolution. FFI problems tend to be like this, so
> documenting them on the bug tracker may be helpful both for you and for
> other people who encounter these issues.
> 
> Reporting issues on the mailing lists is also good, especially if discussion
> is needed.
> 
> So for issues such as FFI problems: Document this issue as well as you can
> on the bug tracker, and take it to the mailing list for discussion. Exactly
> as you have been doing.

+1, but the most important thing for me is a reproducible case, preferably an image that exhibits the bug in startup without needing my intervention (selecting doit etc).  And it's nice to have the platform mentioned somewhere obvious.


>> There were some issues reported for the 4.3 and 4.4 release and they are
>> outdated now,
>> as I am an "updater" now, I can close those myself, but two issues are
>> reported
>> for project "squeak website", can someone else close this issues please.
>> 
>> Some time after the 4.4 (or 4.5?) release, I asked several times on the ML
>> for
>> the release plan for the VM, because I had some serious problems with
>> getting
>> FFI to work with the included VM (it was quite old), but I got no responds.
>> And as the prerelease for 4.6 was announced, I asked if it has a squeak vm
>> release candidate  too,
>> but again, I got no response.
>> Is the Squeak release always only about the image?
> 
> As a general rule, yes. But in the case of Squeak 4.6/5.0, definitely no.
> 
> Usually, a Squeak image should run on a range of VMs, and conversely, a VM
> is expected to be able to run a wide range of images.
> 
> The Squeak 4.6 and 5.0 releases are different. Here we are making significant
> change to the actual object formats in the Squeak image, along with major
> changes in the VMs that take advantage of the new format. This requires a
> coordinated release of image and VM. You may expect additional changes of this
> nature as Squeak moves toward 64-bit images and VMs, so for perhaps the next
> year or so we should expect close coupling of released images with compatible
> VMs. Maybe after that we will settle back into a cadence in which image releases
> are relatively independent of VM versions.

+1.  I think it's going to take a good few months for Spur to settle down.  For example, properly fixing image segment loading just took a reworking of the segment load primitive to alter the segment word array so it answers the objects loaded.  A number of new facilities (ephemerons, pinning) may cause a bug tail when people start really using them.  It may be wise to plan on a maintenance release, say 5.1, which will aim to be more stable.


> Dave
> 
>