Squeak Maintainence and Condensed Sources stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch Tue Jul 25 06:54:18 UTC 2006 replied:
On 25 juil. 06, at 06:15, Peace Jerome wrote:
Squeak Maintainence and Condensed Sources
Hi Marcus,
Thank you for your first reply to Condensed Sources vs. Squeak Maintainence
To restate the essesnce of my concern:
I believe a great deal of code will rot and squeak will become a lot more fragile than it already is
if
you compress sources now in the process of
finalizing
3.9.
Why do you say that kind of thing? I really do not get it. This is not true.
It is true that it is my current belief.
In building Squeak you have included several major integrations. -Traits, -UIManager (and tools and plustools systems.) -The Squeakland progress from 3.8 including pieces of stuff from connectors and Kadema -The Smalland stuff from Diego. -My iteration on polygons and curves. -Omnibrowser.
And you have commited to a new way to maintain the source code MC packages.
I cant speak for traits because I have not focused on that aspect of the system.
Omnibrowser from a preliminary look at the code looks like it has been written by people who know good code. And though Ive found some integration bugs they seem to have been easily fixed.
The UIManager was intergrated with several easily findable annoying bugs still present. For a while it broke the sender/implementers buttons in browsers. For these bugs to slip by the maintainers would suggest it was poorly check before being submitted for integration. Those bugs were fixed. There are probably many more subtle bugs attributable to those packages waiting to be found.
The Squeakland stuff is a mismash. The code there has been patched and fixed by people still learning the subtleties of squeak. Bugs have turned up and more are likely to be in that code.
The history was important to me in tracking down why polygons were getting deleted when dropped on the wrong objects. It helped pinpoint what changed and who changed it. It helped me get in touch with the changer. And he used the feedback to improve his code. With out the history will finding the source of the problems be as easy?
The Smalland stuff added a lot to squeak in its usability and visual design. If you look at the implementation you see a lack of consideration for subtleties. In particular code dependencies were increased greatly. That stuff needs to be looked at closely by someone aware of what it means to reduce code surface area. Is that going to be easier to do if the history is lost?
I understand your concern about the changes file
going
over its limit.
I also understand the great deal of effort you and Stef have put it to 3.9 to date. And that getting things done has largely relied on your time and effort. Easy to implement solutions would be appreciated I imagine?
First the task of getting a 3.10 with all changes
from
3.9 would start with '3.9a with all changes from
3.0'
that Doug Way (bless his heart) produced after I
said
please three times in one post.
But this will not scale!
If it doesnt scale then you have to stop at somepoint. The end of a development cycle is the worst place to stop. The beginning of one is better.
Second condensed sources should come at the
beginning
of an alpha cycle not at an end.
So you will not get a true condense version but one
with all the changes
from that version.
Yes. You would have a 3.9 with all changes from Squeak-6665. This gives a way to check on the history of changes in 3.9. Thats what I need. My experience with Doug 6665 with all changes is that it is a BIG help. It meant being able to track down programers intentions and determining where and when things went wrong.
This does not preclude a second condensing of sources at the beginning of 3.10. It solves in a less than ideal but acceptable way the timely need for the historical data.
So one alternative is to condense sources with the first version of
3.9
alpha (or the 3.8 version just before that name change. And produce a 3.9 with all changes from
3.8
(condensed) source. That would not be as nice but
it
would at least be acceptable.
You and Stef have been given arbitrary authority to determine how 3.9 gets made. The consequences of
how
you choose to use that authority and what decisions you make affects the whole community.
But are you serious? Do you want us to deliver a
system that
you CANNOT use?
I think we are having language problems again. How do I make myself clear. What I am asking for is for the sake of maintainence.
3.8 was delivered. Then the version with the full changes was made secondarily. It was made after 3-6 months delay when Doug responded to my second request. I am just asking that my need for this change history be considered. I am hoping it can be honored at an earlier point in time to increase its usefulness.
I expect 3.9 to be delivered. And a 3.9 with full changes to be made available at the same time or shortly there after.
Because you cannot even load any decent package?
Huh? When do you run out of the ability to load decent packages?
Is it really what you want?
If I do not seem to you to be making a reasonable request, then I must be saying something wrong. I appologize for the language barrier. (See my reply to Marcus)
I see several of those decisions as increasing the brittleness of squeak and I am voicing my concerns.
I
ask only that you do your best to address them.
Have you checked the number of bug fixes that we
integrated/took care?
Yes. You and Marcus have been comprehensive in you inclusion of fixes and enhancements into 3dot9. You deserve the credit for the good work and effort.
Instead of complaining like that the only way to go
is: I make my complaints on mantis. This is criticism aimed at appreciating the value of squeak.
- build a simple infrastructure so that we can
browse any code version
- fix the limit of the 32Mb
I do not have the experience to tackle those tasks. Let's look forward to help from the community.
There are no other choice
Not having more choices is a bug ;-) .
Stef
Addendum,
In these posts I have been harsh in my critism of the 3dot9 team. And I have not lightened it by acknowledging the good work you and Marcus have done. You both have labored over a year and a half to deliver a squeak with the seeds of a lot of opportunities for others to build on. Overall its a pretty successful effort. The current 7048 addresses most of the visible problems that arose as you did major integrations. And by doing the work you serve a lot of us who just wanted to use the images as they came out. That was true service. I dont want to loose sight of that in our current discussion.
Thanks for your service.
Yours currently in critism but always in service, -- Jerome Peace.
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