And IMHO:
- "I want to have the image staked out with maintainers assigned so
that we have 'owners' of the code."
This #4 doesn't imply 1, 2 or 3. It is useful all on its own.
FULLY AGREED. This lets people specialize in parts of Squeak, which helps with (a) answering questions anyone might have about that part, and (b) processing bugs and patches posted against that part.
The first use case I have in mind is this one:
CASE: Bob sends an FIX which causes FileUrl to properly parse URL's with three slashes in them. This FIX gets included into the Squeak distribution.
Partitioning + assignment of maintainers, implements this use case as follows. Jill (say) is assigned as maintainer for the URL package. Jill knows that package fairly well, and can determine that the submitted fix is a good one. Jill proclaims the fix to be a good one, and this is enough that the fix goes into the pipeline for being included in the Squeak distribution. (This might be as simple as giving Jill write access to the official version of the URL package--she can update it whenever she wants).
A second use case, is that Bob finds a bug but does not know how to fix it. He sends his bug report to Jill, who is in a perfect position to choose the next step forward due to her familiarity with the package. Partitioning plus maintainer-assignment means that the Bob and Jill can easily find each other and start communicating.
-Lex