Thank you all for understanding. We're going to be doing our part to forward Squeak (We're already working on adding OS windows and all sorts of goodness)
We can't really port Tweak until M17n is in place however as we don't want to keep re-porting it. And as it stands, some comments won't even load in properly :)
I'm not asking anyone to build a special Squeak for us. But I think more stable squeaks with shorter life cycles are better for the platform than a 18 month release with 20 new things that cause all sorts of havoc.
Not to mention once this m17n stuff goes in and is debugged, everyone in the community wins with a large step forward.
Steve
P.S. We don't have a page for TK4 up yet, which will be open source btw. I'm working on it.
On Jul 27, 2004, at 10:10 AM, Julian Fitzell wrote:
I actually think this sounds reasonable too. I think it's useful to focus on a specific feature set for a release and m17n certainly seems large enough to pretty much justify its own release. By the time we work out any bugs in it and any other that we come along (plus random other small stuff) there will be plenty of reason to do it. It would also give us practice at getting shorter releases :)
Julian
Andreas Raab wrote:
Hi Doug, I think it is worthwhile for a number of ongoing projects to consider a very short 3.8 cycle which basically pulls in the m17n stuff and no more. The reason being that various projects do need a stable point of departure which *does* include m17n and the changes are major enough that they will most definitely need some time to shake down. I think we would be better off if we basically go to beta straight away and maybe have another release two months down the road than putting in (and waiting for!) "new stuff" and have the next release only 6-8 month from now. Cheers,
- Andreas
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Way" dway@mailcan.com To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 10:39 PM Subject: Re: Squeak 3.8 status
On Monday, July 26, 2004, at 02:20 PM, Steven Riggins wrote:
Hello folks!
We've begun work on TK4 in Tweak. One of the issues that has come up is the internationalization work that Michael and Yoshiki are working on.
Since TK4 depends on this work, I'd like to get a sense of the 3.8 status. I've seen notes from as far back as January, but I don't think 3.8 is done yet.
There was originally talk (early this year) of getting the internationalization work in 3.7, but the i18n changes were major enough that Michael & Yoshiki needed a stable point at which to add the changes, instead of the constantly shifting base of 3.7alpha. So they're being added now as the first item in 3.8alpha, without having to have any other changes go in first.
3.8 is not done yet, it only recently started.
I'd like to see 3.8 nailed down to just these changes and finished.
Well, 3.8 was tentatively planned to be a shorter/smaller release (coordinated with the 64-bit 4.0 release) so something like this *might* work out. But we need to hear from the 64-bit folks on this.
(disclaimer: I'm just now looking up "TK4" on Google, although I'm familiar with Tweak & Croquet)
As more and more people learn about Squeak/Tweak and more projects start to rely on the wonderful work you do, we're going to need more stable versions than less stable versions, and shorter development cycles for each iteration.
Unfortunately these last two (more stability and shorter development cycles) are in conflict with each other. Well, you can decrease the overall amount of change in Squeak and then I guess you could get both of those things. Or, try to improve the development process in general (e.g. have the equivalent of some direct "committers"), which we're working on, but that's not easy.
Anyway, 3.7 is taking about 9 months instead of the originally planned 6 months, so I agree that is too long. But getting the releases significantly faster than every 6 months... ain't gonna happen anytime soon. It would require someone else taking over the release process from me (for starters), and doing a lot of work on the process...
- Doug