> However, personal packages are a good idea. Their only disadvantage is 
> that they make it harder to check dependencies ...

You can also think of this as an advantage: it forces you to reckon 
that, as a core developer, you will never see all the code that exists, 
and so that you can never be certain to have sorted out all dependencies...

I am writing this as someone who has updated its code base through each 
Squeak release since 3.8 - it has been rocky at times, even with core 
developers deeply caring about backward compatibility. Some of the 
Morphic refactorings in trunk made me struggle quite a bit, although 
they were well designed. Their authors just could not know all the 
dependencies that exist in the outside world.

As of today, my own personal package has about 1000 convenience methods.
Overall in my working image I have about 300000 lines of code over 
around 35000 methods, spread all over the system because I see Squeak as 
the Dynabook and play with about everthing I like there (which is, 
almost everything :).

Best,

Stef