<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Hi Doug,</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Running concurrent development streams without a very strong management structure is just asking for trouble. We do this on some projects at my day job, and it is always a struggle to pull changes forward from a numerically lower version that was being worked on simultaneously. IMO, 3.8gamma should have been frozen and declared "final" before people launched into 3.9 alpha.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">When something is declared "gamma", to me, that should mean that "This is essentially the final release except for fixing show stopping bugs reported in the gamma build." or something similar. Why is there no "3.8 final" yet, and why is there a "3.9 alpha" and changes still being made to both?</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">I find the current state of affairs troubling, and have just stuck with 3.7 for anything I am working on until sanity returns to Squeak development.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">It seems like 3.8 has been going on for quite a long time now (i.e. > 6 months). Andreas is a very smart guy, but either 3.8 isn't really in "gamma", or his refactoring should not be in the 3.8 "gamma" stream. There are too many open questions for this refactoring to go into a "gamma" build, . Mind you, I like his refactoring, but I think this is more a question of development process. It seems that this refactoring is more of an improvement than a fix for show stoppers, so it shouldn't go into a stream that is supposedly in "gamma", no?</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Am I misunderstanding the meaning of "gamma" for Squeak development streams?</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif"> -Dean</font>
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<td><font size=1 face="sans-serif"><b>Doug Way <dway@mailcan.com></b></font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Sent by: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org</font>
<p><font size=1 face="sans-serif">04/16/2005 05:47 PM</font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Please respond to The general-purpose Squeak developers list</font>
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<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif"> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list <squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org></font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif"> cc: </font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif"> Subject: Re: 3.8/3.9 Divergence</font></table>
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I think the current situation is somewhat unusual, in that a major <br>
update (the String refactoring) was added to a x.y beta/gamma release, <br>
but not added to the following x.y+1 alpha release.<br>
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In this case I think it was warranted... basically there were already <br>
some major changes to String made early in 3.8alpha (because of m17n), <br>
so if we're going to revamp those changes, we should really try to do <br>
it in the same release if at all possible. (So we don't have 3.7 with <br>
old-style Strings, 3.8 with major String changes, and 3.9 with yet more <br>
major String changes.) Even if this means delaying 3.8 a bit.<br>
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And also, there will be 3.8.1, 3.8.2 etc releases which can contain bug <br>
fixes.<br>
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Actually, I don't think 3.9alpha had really diverged that much from <br>
3.8gamma (before the String changes)... the only major change was <br>
Diego's look changes, but a lot of that was just image/preference <br>
changes. So I don't think it will be too hard to port the String <br>
changes forward from 3.8gamma to 3.9alpha. I guess the idea is to <br>
hammer out the (String change) problems in the 3.8gamma version before <br>
porting it forward to 3.9alpha.<br>
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So in summary, I don't think this will be a particularly common <br>
situation.<br>
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- Doug<br>
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On Apr 15, 2005, at 2:25 PM, Ken Causey wrote:<br>
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> As Bert's chart on http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/275 shows the<br>
> sequence of updates between for 3.8 and 3.9 is quite complicated. At<br>
> times (including now) we've had a situation where there are updates in<br>
> the 3.8 update stream that are not in the 3.9 update stream. Now maybe<br>
> I just haven't been paying much attention in the past but this is not a<br>
> common occurrence in the history of Squeak development I don't believe.<br>
> Right now it is causing us in the Janitors team a bit of a headache as<br>
> it's a bit of a toss up at times to what image a given fix may or may<br>
> not apply. We've had a policy of testing everything against a fully<br>
> updated 3.9 image and this has been fine in general but is right now a<br>
> problem with all the String updates that are in 3.8 but not in 3.9.<br>
><br>
> What I'm wondering is whether we expect this to be a more common<br>
> situation in the future than it has been in the past. To be more<br>
> explicit do we expect it to be not uncommon in the future for there to<br>
> be a situation in which y.x has some number of updates that y.(x+1) <br>
> does<br>
> not? If so then we (Janitors and friends) will need to plan for this I<br>
> think.<br>
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> Ken<br>
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