Possible 3.9 Release objectives

[Doug Way]

Okay folks, to kickoff the 3.9 Release Team discussion list, here is a 
tentative list of 3.9 Release objectives that I culled from various 
discussions.

I'll put these on a wiki soon.  I was going to put them on the 
Coordinators wiki, although maybe a publicly editable wiki such as the 
Swiki would be fine, so comments can be added.  (It was fine for 
previous release to-do lists.)

As the 3.9 Release coordinator, I will try to gauge community opinion 
on the big issues as far as what should go in, and remain mostly 
neutral myself.  (I have a pretty neutral opinion myself on whether 
most of these should go in.  The only one I personally really want to 
see added is OmniBrowser.)

We will try to get feedback from stakeholders and the community before 
including one of the "Major" features.

Feedback is welcome.  This is a public list and anyone can post, 
although I'm sure it's a much smaller group than squeak-dev, and the 
discussion won't feel quite as "public".  After it's discussed here a 
bit, we can post to squeak-dev.  (Which of course doesn't necessarily 
mean that anything is "final"...)

- Doug



------------------------------------------------
Possible 3.9 Release objectives:


3.9 Basic Content
----------------------
- Major enhancements/features
   - Under consideration, needs further discussion:
     - Traits
     - New Compiler framework from Anthony adapted by Marcus
     - Final refactoring of SystemDictionary
     - RB engine
   - Probably going in, but discussion is welcome:
     - OmniBrowser
     - Monticello (*if* this is really needed to help partitioning, it 
should go into Basic)

- Medium-sized & miscellaneous grab-bag enhancements to be considered, 
listed here as a reminder.
   - A Services framework (to let any type of service register itself 
without having to modify base methods).  Consider Romain's if the 
implementation is solid/ready.
   - New Preferences pane
   - Keybindings
   - Bert's Enh for printing := in method body
   - Enh for self evaluation (Stef and Alex)
   - Andrew's fixes/refactoring of Association
   - Shout, eCompletion, etc. (depending on performance/necessity, some 
of these should remain as separate packages)
   - ...
   - (Here is where more suggestions are welcome.  Especially for things 
you haven't written yourself.)

- Partitioning
   - An ongoing process, will coordinate with Packages team (and Morphic 
Splitters team)
   - Expect that the Packages team will choose a package format soon so 
partitioning can begin during 3.9.  It does not have to be the perfect 
format, since the Modules team may improve upon it.
   - Some partitioning should be complete for the 3.9 final release, 
maybe not all
   - Partitioning of something into a package would not necessarily mean 
removal from the 3.9 Basic configuration

- Other
   - Refine Smallland look changes, maybe scale back some changes to 
improve performance
   - See if there are a few simple enhs that can be done to speed up 
Morphic UI performance a bit
   - Consideration of Package Universes or similar concept, easily 
accessible from the final 3.9 UI
   - Need to fix severe bug in 3.9a with scrolling when deprecation 
warnings are turned on


3.9 Full Content
--------------------
- Maybe add a few packages to the Full release
   - Connectors (duh)
   - Genie


3.9 Process
---------------
- Get update stream restarted soon with a clearly defined process, 
probably using unstable+stable stream
- Post-3.9-release fixes process, although this will probably start 
with 3.8
   - Support post-release stable update stream, also 3.9.1, 3.9.2 
version numbers


3.9 Timing
-------------
- Possibly June/July 2005, currently a vague target date


Post-3.9
-----------
- A modules system from Modules team
- 64-bit Squeak
- etc