(This seemed sufficiently different from the original thread subject,
"FileList[2]>directory: oddity", that I thought I'd start a new thread.
Squat mailing list info is at http://netjam.org/squat . Squat is a
minimal-snapshot-and-virtual-machine project.)
Hi Stef--
> do you have a plan to get a smooth integration of Flow (meaning
> slowly deprecate the current stream)? If I remember old discussions
> people were afraid of big bang changes. However it would be good to
> start to thing how flow could become a good replacement of Stream.
>
> What are your current plans? I'm not expert in Streams so does
> anybody expertise on Flow and stream comment?
As I've mentioned before on the Squeak list (but not on a webpage,
sorry, will get to that), I'm focusing my attention on Flow releases for
Squeak 4 and beyond, when ostensibly there will be a minimal snapshot to
work from. It's just so much nicer than dealing with the traditional
accreted snapshot and the release process constaints it imposes. And I
don't just feel that way in the context of Flow; I want to release
*everything* I do as modules for a minimal snapshot.
After that infrastructure is in place and Flow is available through it,
then I might make releases for older systems. It's not all that hard; I
had to do it for 2.2 to get the Squat work started, after all. :) It
just takes time, and the minimal snapshot work is much more important to
me right now.
So that's timing (although we don't have dates for things yet). As for
the technical execution, I think it'd be straightforward. I've been
careful in each Flow release so far to make sure that the old and new
stuff work together in the same system, although some *clients* may need
to be updated, when there is class name contention. The most recent
release of Flow, 2 alpha, does this for Squeak 3.2, the version that was
current at the time (August 2002). Class name contention was the main
issue with that release (the old Stream became "OldStream", etc.). Not
really a big deal, in my opinion, and of course handled a lot more
easily in a modularized system (where one can refer to classes by ID and
not name, for example, and have multiple versions also). I've found in
the past that if you let the old things keep the old names, people stay
complacent, even if you run reports that point out who hasn't converted
yet. :) Finally, the Flow 2a release has everything separated out
pretty well into different changesets; in particular, all the
forward-compatibility stuff is easy to find.
Another thing that makes me confident is that I've already converted a
Squeak system from old streams to new (at a past employer). I actually
removed all the old stuff, and things were fine.
thanks,
-C
--
Craig Latta
http://netjam.org/resume
craig(a)netjam.org
[|] Proceed for Truth!
