[Squeakfoundation]The update stream, 3.4, 3.5, harvesting

[Doug Way]

Hello all.  Several items...

Just to keep everyone posted, Scott has given me instructions on how to 
add updates to the Squeak update stream.  So, SqC has "handed over the 
keys" so to speak, and I am now the official maintainer of the update 
stream, more or less.

Of course, my manual handling of the update stream is somewhat 
temporary... the idea being that with the upcoming harvesting tool, the 
addition of items to the update stream will become more automated, with 
a process known to the community.  (Although it will probably always 
require some manual tweaking on occasion.)

I'm about to start working on this harvesting tool (based on SqueakMap 
1.05), but it's hard to say when it would be ready to use.  I'll shoot 
for having something ready within a month or so. (with input from this 
list, of course)

But in the meantime, we probably shouldn't let 3.5alpha stagnate, so I'm 
going to add some harvesting tables of recent submissions to the ol' 
superswiki pages one more time.  The harvesters/guides/SqC can then 
review items for inclusion in 3.5alpha, as was the process several 
months ago.  I'll post again as soon as I've added these tables.

Which brings up a question:  Who in general should be able to 
review/approve items to be harvested?  I would say the current 
harvesters + the guides + the SqC folks would be a good starting point.  
But there are other qualified Squeakers out there, too.  For now, if 
someone else really wants to volunteer to help with harvesting, I could 
add them to the list of harvesters, and they can help with the swiki 
tables.  However, once the better harvesting tool is in place, 
harvesting should be somewhat easier (editing the swiki tables is a bit 
of a pain), so that might be a better time to get more volunteers.  (And 
yes, eventually, once the image is split up into packages, we want to 
have different people in charge of approving what goes into each 
package, and maybe have an update stream for each package, if desired.  
But the first version of the harvesting tool probably won't be 
package-specific yet.)

Aside from harvesting, there are more general plans which need to be 
discussed for 3.5.  Such as how much of the image should we try to break 
off into packages, which larger enhancements should be considered, what 
would be an approximate release date, etc.  Someone other than me should 
lead this discussion, I have enough to do myself. ;-)  Daniel led some 
discussion on this in the past, so perhaps he could continue.

In other news, the 3.4gammaOne image has been out there now for over a 
week.  There haven't been any major bugs reported with it, so I'm 
thinking that we could probably make this the 3.4 final image in a few 
days, and then release it on squeak.org.  (Of course, a lack of feedback 
may also mean that not many folks have tested it.  I would encourage 
everyone to at least give it a quick test.  The differences in the image 
itself are relatively minor compared with an image updated from 3.4beta, 
though... e.g. the contents of the welcome windows have changed a bit.  
See ftp://st.cs.uiuc.edu/pub/Smalltalk/Squeak/3.4gamma/ )

As we approach the 3.4 final release, we'll want to make sure a few 
things are in order:

* Make sure that the VM's for various platforms (Mac & Windows at least) 
are decided upon as the 3.4 VM's to be included in the bundles on 
squeak.org.  Bruce O'Neel would then put the bundles together and update 
the squeak.org download page accordingly, when we are ready to release.

* Make sure the 3.4 release is announced in all the right places, as 
described on the "External Relations" SqF swiki page.  Cees de Groot is 
in charge of this.

* Anything else?

Ok, I think that's it for now.

- Doug