[Squeakfoundation]Squeak downloads

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Guys,

I had recently the need to review the download and installation of Squeak on
various platforms and to be honest - it's a mess. If you try to find your
way around Squeak.org's download area you get lost so incredibly fast, it's
amazing that some people manage to get Squeak anyways.

Since I know that all of you are busy, I've done some work on it. My
proposal is to link from Squeak.org directly into the main Squeak Swiki and
there, provide a download page as can be seen at:

	http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3262


Let me say a few words about what I'm trying to do here. 

First of all, the point is to download Squeak not to look at funny pictures.
The eye-candy at Squeak.org is certainly nice but when it comes to download
we want those files - and nothing more. So there are quite deliberately no
icons on this page. 

Secondly, I think people often look for documentation of Squeak most of
which is found at the Swiki. Hosting the download page at the Swiki itself
means that *everyone* who has ever downloaded Squeak has seen the Swiki at
least once. That's what the first sentence in the above is for - so people
know they are now at the right place. In addition, using a Swiki means we
can much more easily change and update things. When a new version gets out
we just change it and then, as the latest platform bundles come in, update
the information appropriately. The download area at the Swiki also means we
have a more level playing ground for alternative ports (you may see that one
entry lists MobVM which is otherwise impossible to find).

About the contents of the download table:
* "full" means a bundle that absolutely includes everything you need to run
Squeak. As we don't provide this for all packages we may have some missing
entries. However, it's a Swiki so it's simple for people to make one up on
their own and we just link it.
* "image" means image+changes+sources for the listed "stable" version of
that platform. Nothing is more bothering than to see that a BeOS port exist
but not to know what one needs to download.
* "stable VM" means the latest stable VM known to run well for the listed
stable version of Squeak. Therefore, "image" + "stable VM" is everything you
need if you haven't a full package available
* "VM source code" explicitly links to the source code for the VM in
question. Many people find it extremely hard to find the sources for VMs so
here we can point them directly towards it.

In addition, we have an "info" link which allows us to link to specific
places for some VM/port. This allows us to decouple the primary download
place from information such as port maintainer, release notes, specific bits
about the platform. All of this is useful information but it should be
hosted elsewhere.

Based on the above download page, I figure that a new Squeak release process
(exemplified with 3.6) would consist of the following steps:
a) we make a copy of the current download page and name it appropriately
(such as "DownloadsForSqueak3.5") - this is now a "previous version"
b) change the latest stable version and link to the previous version. In
effect this means you can always wander backwards through all the old
versions and get - for example - exactly the "right" VM for Squeak 3.2 or
so. Therefore we only need to link to some previous versions here.
c) Update the links for the "primary" full/image packages which Bruce
handles.

>From here on, we can leave everything as is. If we have some platform
maintainer who wants to update his or her port, she can simply update "her
row" in the table. So it's a very simple, straightforward and obvious
process which means that if people are interested they have a single place
where they can download about everything that's interesting about Squeak.

What do you think?

Cheers,
  - Andreas