[Squeakfoundation]Re: releasing SqueakMap, going forward

[Doug Way]

Craig Latta wrote:
> 
>         As I suggested at this month's OOPSLA Squeak BOF, I think the thing to
> do is make 3.4 consist of just 3.2final plus SqueakMap. This would seem
> to have negligible impact on registered packages; I think we could just
> make confirmation of that part of the testing for 3.4. Then start on
> 3.5, with all the other changes floating around since the beginning of
> development on the now-defunct 3.3.

Not an unreasonable suggestion, but I think it's probably too late to do that at this point, without introducing a lot of confusion.

3.2.1 has already been created (as a fork in the update stream, it doesn't appear to be on the ftp site).  And 3.4alpha already has all of the 3.3alpha changes retrofitted into its update stream, plus a few other small changes.  So to make 3.4 consist of only 3.2final plus SqueakMap, we'd have to dump almost all of the stuff currently in the 3.4alpha update stream.  This would cause confusion for people currently using 3.4alpha, and it may also cause problems for some packages on SqueakMap which are listed as 3.4alpha-compatible and which may depend on some of the updates in 3.4alpha.

Scott/SqC actually split off 3.2.1 before the Guides really got organized, so it wasn't really a Guides-based decision.  But I think the current situation is OK anyway.

(I could go either way as to whether your suggestion or the current situation is the better way to handle it.  On one hand, Squeak does not normally update its minor version number (e.g. 3.2 to 3.4) based on such a small addition code-wise (SqueakMap), so a tertiary version for this makes some sense.  On the other hand, Squeak has never used tertiary version numbering before, so it is a bit weird to introduce it now.)

If we don't like tertiary version numbers for Squeak releases, maybe we could agree to try to avoid them in the future.

John also suggested that we could have just updated 3.2 with SqueakMap and left the version number at 3.2, but I tend to agree with Craig that that would not have been a good idea, because Squeak 3.2 had already been released as "final" and was available on the download page at squeak.org for a couple of months.  If we had done this, there would have been confusion as to which version was the real 3.2final.  (For example, I think Stephane Ducasse might have used the original 3.2final to put on CD's for his book.)

- Doug