Spoon November 2003

spoon@lists.squeakfoundation.org

3 participants
3 discussions

RE: Squat progress 13 November 2003: more installation and distribution details
by mikevdg 17 Nov '03

17 Nov '03

Hi Craig. It's great to hear about progress, but have you released anything that other people can play around with? I'm working on a similar project (occasionally...) and I'm quite keen to see your work. Michael.

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Squat progress 13 November 2003: more installation and distribution details
by Craig Latta 13 Nov '03

13 Nov '03

(Squat project and mailing list info at http://netjam.org/squat ) Hi-- Here are a few more details about Squat installation and component distribiution. I've made some improvements to the installer (which started out life as the "relief" demo). The biggest changes recently are auto-detection of the visitor's host platform, and the removal of all hardwired references to any particular domain name in the installer machine code. Here's a recap of the chain of events during installation. Someone who'd like to run Squat (the "visitor") visits one of several Squat distribution websites. That site is running a "meta-installer". That is, the site autodetects the HTTP visitor's host platform, and transfers an appropriate installer to the visitor's machine, where the installer runs (assuming the visitor chooses to proceed from any security warnings issued by the host platform). The installer downloads the system, while the meta-installer displays installation progress via the visitor's web browser. The installer then starts the system, which requests a session-unique sentinel file from the meta-installer's web server (the name of the sentinel file is encoded into the name of the installer executable). The meta-installer detects this request, and redirects the visitor's web browser to a web server now running in the system. The visitor may now choose additional components to install into the running system. Distributors may configure this mechanism so that the system installs and runs particular components of its own accord, rather than waiting for the visitor to specify them. This is done by referring to a component (by UUID) in the sentinel file. In this way one could, for example, provide one URL which, when visited, just installs and runs a system that waits for further loading instructions, and another URL which runs a system that provides some application(s). In any case, the visitor installs and runs each system by simply visiting a URL, and quite possibly an easy-to-remember URL at that. :) Components are provided by a relay network of servers, via remote message-sending. I anticipate the first public release when I have a working demo of a minimal snapshot "putting its head back on", by loading appropriate modules from the Net, and displaying something on the visitor's screen. I'm interested in discussing the timing of possible integration of Squat with the Squeak release schedule. It feels like a few weeks from being usable, certainly in time for the next major Squeak release (version 4) given the nominal scheduling of Squeak releases. Any feedback is very welcome, especially feature requests to the Squat mailing list. I'm usually on the Squeak IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.net:6667/#squeak) from 1800-0300 GMT, sometimes 0400-1100 too. thanks, -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org [|] Proceed for Truth!

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Feature Request: 1-Click
by Brent Vukmer 10 Nov '03

10 Nov '03

I'd like to be able to email friends a link that would "do it all". That is, the URL should contain all the info needed to build an image that runs an app / loads a project I'm calling it "1-Click Squeak" and patenting it :) I know this could result in quite a long URL, so a follow-on request is that there be a service like tinyurl, where the real url would be stored on a server and an alias would be distributed. (Maybe SqueakMap could provide that service somehow...) Cheers, Brent __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree

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Spoon November 2003