I don't say it's not possible, especially if you stay concentrated on one distribution,
It's perfectly do-able, and I wish success to the 3 main branches, Cuis Pharo Squeak.
What I say is that transporting packages from one distribution to another is a tremendous work.
Even if we have cleaned inter-package dependencies (most of this hardwork effectively comes from Pavel in Squeak/Pharo branches), we have to suffer from
- different choices for some basic API (includeSubstring: as example)
- different delimitation of packages (Take Pharo Text-Scanning as example)
- total lack of support from Monticello
I sometimes tries to port some low level code
(Kernel, Graphics, Morphic, Collection) from one distribution to
another, and often resort to using change sets, MC just do not work.
Even if we would improve tools, the first two points depend on a minimum of coordination, and it's not in the mood of Pharo developers.
Pharo want to be free of these chains, because it has to win a sprint:
- clean up the maximum of dust before the system is frozen by large user base...
It's not a critic, I perfectly understand this position, it's a deliberate choice.
Nicolas