[Squeakfoundation]WeakMessageSends/Events for 3.4

goran.hultgren@bluefish.se squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
Mon, 9 Dec 2002 15:19:56 +0100


"Stephen Pair" <spair@acm.org> wrote:
> I agree with Göran on this issue.
> 
> Indeed, I'd take it a step further and say no new features period...ever
> (for the base Squeak that is).  Stuff like a new events mechanism,
> networking frameworks, etc...should all remain as external packages.  We
> need to be working in that opposite direction and start having change
> sets in the update stream jettison code, not add.

Yes, exactly. Of course, there may always be a few exceptions to the
rule - but I agree.

> Now, what would be great is to have a base Squeak realease, plus a
> number of "distributions" that contain a variety of packages that are
> pre-loaded.  One of these could be the SqC distribution that is
> downloadable from the squeak.org site (this would be the distro that
> most people download first).

Yes. IMHO this will be doable using SqueakMap 1.1 - when we have package
releases.

> One of the things that could be done to help encourage progress in that
> direction is to start thinking about automating image construction
> (i.e., take the base image, add packages X, Y, and Z, then publish
> somewhere).  Some tools to help with that would be nice.

Essantially I consider this to be done by using a "load script"
(typically a static one) that uses the SqueakMap API to install the
specific package releases. And this would work today - if we had package
releases. Which we don't. Yet. ;-)

But while I am hacking away at this (it will not be ready before
christmas - I am taking this chance to really clean things up and add a
few other Very Good Things) it would be interesting to start talking in
terms of:

- which packages are "base packages"
- what special rules do we want to have for them
- and where do we put them.

The last question is probably the easiest to answer:
squeakfoundation.org.

regards, Göran