[squeak-dev] worst crash yet trying to load stuff from Packages Universe in 3.10.2....
Hi Greg,
I like your spirit of adventure. My bug finding/creating assistant Puck thinks you do good work. :)
Sure you wouldn't like to become a mantis reporter?
***
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. woods at planix.ca Mon Dec 15 00:13:37 UTC 2008
OK, one more try I thought.....
I took a fresh 3.10.2-7179 image, set my preferences, opened up the Packages Universe, carefully selected the packages I wanted, being extra careful to avoid the ones that I've had problems with already, and started the installs......
Things looked like they had finished fine, and so I tried clicking on the Packages Universe window again to see what it might say and KABOOM! (this all retyped by hand)
***System error handling failed*** Original error: MessageNotUnderstood: LabelMorph class>>contents:. Debugger error: MessageNotUnderstood: LabelMorph class>>contensts:: [] in Debugger class>>openOn:context:label:contents:fullView: {[:ex | self primitiveError: 'Original error: ', title asString, ', Debuge...]} BlockContext>>valueWithPossibleArgs: [] in MethodContext(ContextPart)>>handleSignal: {[(self tempAt: 2) valueWithPossibleArgs: {exception}]} blockContext>>ensure: MethodContext(ContextPart)>>handleSignal: MessageNotUnderstood(Exception)>>signal LabelMorph class(Object)>>doesNotUnderstand: #contents: UIThemeSoftSqueak(UITheme)>>buttonLabelForText: UIThemeSoftSqueak>>buttonLabelForText: UIThemeSoftSqueak(UITheme)>>buttonLabelFor:
Ok. From the evidence so far. You have gotten to the emergency evaluator because the debugger blew up on whatever was the original error.
The debugger blew up probably because of a misdirected message. People tend to put in: answer when they meant: ^ answer. In this case something in the Pinesoft ui enhancements looks like it left one out in a LabelMorph class message. Instead of answering an instance it returned the class itself which had no idea what to do with an message to its instance.
Congratulations you found a bug.
Puck would like to know exactly how to recreate this failure. (So he can try it out on some of his "friends" :).
My curiosity would like to know why you are so ambitious as to load so much. And I sympathize with you wanting it all to work right away. Out of the box.
What you may be slowly realizing is that all this is Beta software at best. Test coverage in squeak is a recent thought. Most of the software is released with prayers for its survival. First time heavy users find the integration bugs. That would be you. Oldtimers, by instinct born of experience, tend to treat squeak tenderly. As if they are walking on eggs that might break at any instant and give off a rotten stentch.
A sad state of affairs to be sure, but the alternative would be a lot of unpaid work. And the person who would take that on would have to have a powerful personal reason for doing so.
So far in this small community no one has shown up with that need. Still you never know.
Leaving aside the who. Do you or anyone else out there have an idea of how that testing could be done?
Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace
On 15-Dec-2008, at 1:46 AM, Jerome Peace wrote:
Sure you wouldn't like to become a mantis reporter?
If I can send an e-mail that will create and/or append to a report, then sure!
Puck would like to know exactly how to recreate this failure. (So he can try it out on some of his "friends" :).
Looks like all I had to do was try to load SmallDEVS from the default package universe.
My curiosity would like to know why you are so ambitious as to load so much.
I want to start with everything I want, either functionality or as reference classes.
Partly I want to start this way because I have VERY quickly learned that I can accidentally break an image just by trying to file something in that someone else has published, even if it has supposedly been "blessed" in some way by being included in the default package universe for the release I'm using. I'm not quite so disciplined that I will remember to be very careful with image copies later on so I'm trying to create a stable baseline image with everything I think I'll want for now.
And I sympathize with you wanting it all to work right away. Out of the box.
To quote from URL:http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5918:
"The Stable 3.10 universe is a package universe for Squeak 3.10, akin to the ones done for 3.7 and 3.9. It includes 214 optional packages that have all been verified to at least load into Squeak 3.10."
I don't exactly know if what it refers to is the same thing that I get when I press the "Package Universe" button on the initial World in the 3.10.2 release image I'm using, but I've now proven at least three or more of the packages from the default PU for 3.10.2 won't even file in cleanly, and I'm just picking from what I would consider to be a _very_ conservative list of things I'm interested in.
What you may be slowly realizing is that all this is Beta software at best.
"beta"? 3.10.2 isn't even a ".0" release (though it is an even number...)
Perhaps I'm confusing a nice big button everyone says to press if I want stuff back that was taken out of old-time Squeak releases with a part of the actual release, but then again there's that claim above I'm quoting.
Test coverage in squeak is a recent thought.
Perhaps, but I didn't have anywhere near this much trouble with 2.8 or 3.0. Squeak's QA has completely disintegrated, at least if you consider the default PU button to be a part of Squeak.
Most of the software is released with prayers for its survival.
From what I've seen of PU, and it's apparent thousands of steps backwards from the 3.0 days, I'm not even sure I see any evidence of such prayers being made for it!
First time heavy users find the integration bugs. That would be you.
Hah! If I'm a "heavy user" then I can't imagine how you would describe someone who really wants to dive into Squeak and do something major. I'm still just learning here. I'm not even interested in doing any of the really fancy database, web, or image maker stuff.
Oldtimers, by instinct born of experience, tend to treat squeak tenderly. As if they are walking on eggs that might break at any instant and give off a rotten stentch.
Having played with 2.8 and 3.0 in days gone by I'd have to say that a great deal of this stench is quite recent.
[squeak-dev] Re: worst crash yet trying to load stuff from Packages Universe in 3.10.2....
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. woods at planix.ca Mon Dec 15 19:54:06 UTC 2008
On 15-Dec-2008, at 1:46 AM, Jerome Peace wrote:
Sure you wouldn't like to become a mantis reporter?
If I can send an e-mail that will create and/or append to a report, then sure!
Puck would like to know exactly how to recreate this failure. (So he can try it out on some of his "friends" :).
Looks like all I had to do was try to load SmallDEVS from the default package universe.
At puck's insistence I loaded the SmallDEVS package (by itself) into a 3.10.2 image. I didn't run into the trouble you described. So SmallDEVS alone is not the problem. I looked at the 3 class side methods for LabelMorph and they all look correct as far as answering an instance. I do not have the Pinesoft UI Enhancements in my image so I still suspect that they have a buggy overide somewhere.
Unreproduceable results are not worth tracking. I usually insist on a mantis report first. I made an exception here. I'll be happy to look into it again if you can describe a recipe for reproducing the bug and put it into a mantis report.
Mantis does not have a email to append feature yet. In their discussions about it, they seemed to think that would lead to spam.
The effort to make a good report acts as a good filter. It doesn't guarantee a report will get attention. But if someone will go through that much work, maybe it will be worth other peoples time to play with it.
Fair warning. This is a volunteer community. That usually means the person something most annoys gets to work on it first.
My curiosity would like to know why you are so ambitious as to load so much.
I want to start with everything I want, either functionality or as reference classes.
Okay. So the question is would there be a way to do that, that would work? Then we create your ideal starting image and share it with others. Advantage: It will take less time to download a 20Meg pre-made image than universe load the pieces from around the world.
Why not make out your list and see if someone with similar interest would be willing to help build the image.
*/>Partly I want to start this way because I have VERY quickly learned
that I can accidentally break an image just by trying to file something in that someone else has published, even if it has supposedly been "blessed" in some way by being included in the default package universe for the release I'm using. I'm not quite so disciplined that I will remember to be very careful with image copies later on so I'm trying to create a stable baseline image with everything I think I'll want for now.
Ok. So making the portmanteau image first, saves having to remember what you left out later. You feel it is less risky than trying to read a module in later and breaking an image you have invested your development effort on. Fair enough.
And I sympathize with you wanting it all to work right away. Out of the box.
To quote from URL:http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5918:
"The Stable 3.10 universe is a package universe for Squeak 3.10, akin to the ones done for 3.7 and 3.9. It includes 214 optional packages that have all been verified to at least load into Squeak 3.10."
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are different.
I don't exactly know if what it refers to is the same thing that I get when I press the "Package Universe" button on the initial World in the 3.10.2 release image I'm using, but I've now proven at least three or more of the packages from the default PU for 3.10.2 won't even file in cleanly, and I'm just picking from what I would consider to be a _very_ conservative list of things I'm interested in.
What you may be slowly realizing is that all this is Beta software at best.
"beta"? 3.10.2 isn't even a ".0" release (though it is an even number...)
Yes. The release process has been struggling. The maintanence choices got people into trouble making bugs much harder to correct. In the end deadlines, not quality dictated what got released. Somebody with authority has to care before this will change. I wonder if the will is out there. Still you never know.
Perhaps I'm confusing a nice big button everyone says to press if I want stuff back that was taken out of old-time Squeak releases with a part of the actual release, but then again there's that claim above I'm quoting.
Test coverage in squeak is a recent thought.
Perhaps, but I didn't have anywhere near this much trouble with 2.8 or 3.0. Squeak's QA has completely disintegrated, at least if you consider the default PU button to be a part of Squeak.
Um, the problem you are describing is there. I would wonder how much is due to laxer quality controls vs. the exponential explosion of combinations that need to be tested. There are a lot more options now than eight to ten years ago.
People have tried to deal with it by striping away pieces and trying for a slimmer basic image in hopes that the quality of that would improve.
Except that there have been major additions. 3.8 added I18n enhancements. That introduced much more complexity especially with fonts and character sets. 3.9 went on for two years. It attempted to add so much from different sources integration problems abound. I've documented what I personally have found on mantis. There is much more that others have come across too. 3.10 was supposed to last six months. It went on for a year. It was headed by Ralph Johnson in Illinois with the workhorse load shouldered by Edgar, who lives in Rosario, Argentina. There were communication problems to put things mildly.
And there were struggles with the method of image maintanence which had shifted at 3.9. Most people will agree that using MC to maintain an image was a problematic choice. My take is that MC is an out of sequence tool. Requiring decisions about packaging to be made too early in the process of writing methods. And patching bugs often cut accross packages. Add that to the fact that MC does not scale well. (Longer and longer times are taken to load larger and larger packages.) And Edgar's time was spent like yours. Learning how to make mistakes and then how to recover from them.
Most of the software is released with prayers for its survival.
From what I've seen of PU, and it's apparent thousands of steps backwards from the 3.0 days, I'm not even sure I see any evidence of such prayers being made for it!
First time heavy users find the integration bugs. That would be you.
Hah! If I'm a "heavy user" then I can't imagine how you would describe someone who really wants to dive into Squeak and do something major.
Your ambitious loading project puts you in the "heavy use" category. Your other posts and your naive expectations of what squeak will be capable of made me think "first time". Your having used squeak back when it worked better doesn't quite nullify that. It does explain some of your persistence and adventurousness.
You at least know and believe it can BE better than the current state of affairs.
I'm still just learning here. I'm not even interested in doing any of the really fancy database, web, or image maker stuff.
Yeah. Me too.
Oldtimers, by instinct born of experience, tend to treat squeak tenderly. As if they are walking on eggs that might break at any instant and give off a rotten stentch.
Having played with 2.8 and 3.0 in days gone by I'd have to say that a great deal of this stench is quite recent.
Yeah. Puck says: " Ain't progress grand?"
Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace
Thanks for your comments Jerome! Your insight is quite useful!
I want to add one comment in reply to one of the things you mention....
On 15-Dec-2008, at 9:36 PM, Jerome Peace wrote:
To quote from URL:http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5918:
"The Stable 3.10 universe is a package universe for Squeak 3.10, akin to the ones done for 3.7 and 3.9. It includes 214 optional packages that have all been verified to at least load into Squeak 3.10."
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are different.
Um, the problem you are describing is there. I would wonder how much is due to laxer quality controls vs. the exponential explosion of combinations that need to be tested. There are a lot more options now than eight to ten years ago.
I wouldn't expect every combination to be tested.
However there is one fool-proof and extremely obvious test that should always be done in this kind of situation, but which clearly was never ever done: LOAD EVERYTHING!
It is, and I think it _should_ be, my expectation that _everything_ in the default Package Universe for an official release should load together cleanly without even a hint of problems or conflicts.
Furthermore _everything_ should be tested minimally in this full-load image. If there are unit tests that can be run then they should _all_ run green. There's no excuse whatsoever for not doing this minimal amount of testing. This kind of QA testing could even be done headless and totally automated. Obviously finding the cause of breakage and eliminating it from the PU is much more difficult, though with the right tools even that can be done automatically. There are tons of examples in other system domains of doing this kind of automated basic QA testing: Mozilla Tinderbox, NetBSD nightly builds, pkgsrc bulk builds, and so on. Why it's not done for Package Universes for Squeak, especially official release PUs, I cannot even begin to imagine.
This lack of basic QA in other Squeak-related images isn't limited to the official Squeak+PU either of course. I've noted that in the most recent Pharo image there are things that are _trivial_ to test but which throw up debugger windows instantly when I try them in a fresh image. I.e. some things obviously were not even looked at, never mind tested in any proper way. For example the basic Alice demo blows chunks.
There are even problems it seems in the latest VisualWorks (7.6) that I've tried too, though nothing quite so drastic as the problems I've had with even the most minimal stuff from the 3.10 PU.
People have tried to deal with it by striping away pieces and trying for a slimmer basic image in hopes that the quality of that would improve.
I don't think that's a valid approach in any way, shape, or form.
Sure, the basic image might be clean and stable, but it's useless. There's no fun stuff for beginners and kids, and there's no useful stuff for developers.
I would try one of the "dev" images, but they include stuff I'm sure I _don't_ want. Sigh.
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:
Puck would like to know exactly how to recreate this failure. (So he can try it out on some of his "friends" :).
Looks like all I had to do was try to load SmallDEVS from the default package universe.
No surprise. Polymorph as a class called LabelMorph. SmallDEVS has a class called LabelMorph. They don't agree. So much for not having name spaces.
Test coverage in squeak is a recent thought.
Perhaps, but I didn't have anywhere near this much trouble with 2.8 or 3.0. Squeak's QA has completely disintegrated, at least if you consider the default PU button to be a part of Squeak.
Well, that's both true and not. A thing to keep in mind here is there wasn't even remotely as much stuff available at your fingertips in those days. SqueakMap did not exist in 2.8, neither did Universes. There were a few better known projects that you could easily find, everything else was basically inaccessible. And with variety come all the packaging and scaling problems that were never addressed in Squeak.
First time heavy users find the integration bugs. That would be you.
Hah! If I'm a "heavy user" then I can't imagine how you would describe someone who really wants to dive into Squeak and do something major. I'm still just learning here. I'm not even interested in doing any of the really fancy database, web, or image maker stuff.
There are misunderstandings on both ends here. As a first-time user you naturally expect those things to "just work" so calling you a "heavy user" is not a good characterization for what you're doing. I would call this "exploratory loading" of packages which is probably the worst kind for integrators to deal with unless they have automated tools for detecting those package conflicts.
As for doing something major: The first thing you leave at home is the idea of loading random untested code from the net and expect it to work in your project. You start with a nice stable base image that you expect to use for several years and build on top of that.
When you need something, you look at the options, see if one suits your task, review the code to see whether it's good enough to reuse or whether you're better off rewriting it from scratch, and then you port it into your environment. I've done this many times and if you start with the expectation that you *will* have to actually port this into your environment you know that this will be a sizable investment but that at the end of the process you have something that works and that you can support over time.
I have done this many times. It works quite well if you are realistic about the investment you are making.
Oldtimers, by instinct born of experience, tend to treat squeak tenderly. As if they are walking on eggs that might break at any instant and give off a rotten stentch.
Having played with 2.8 and 3.0 in days gone by I'd have to say that a great deal of this stench is quite recent.
I think yours is a bit of a case of selective memory ;-) I've been playing in those days too and I do not recall even five projects that one could easily find on the net.
While I agree that there is some completely needless recent breakage that makes things significantly worse than they have to be, I would say that the majority of the problems you are seeing are the result of having more options available at your fingertips.
And the best way I can think about addressing them would be by having automated tests which can be run all the time and which test which packages load together and which ones fail. This information could then be used to inform the user about the conflict and avoid random crashes.
Cheers, - Andreas
On 16-Dec-2008, at 12:00 AM, Andreas Raab wrote:
There are misunderstandings on both ends here. As a first-time user you naturally expect those things to "just work" so calling you a "heavy user" is not a good characterization for what you're doing. I would call this "exploratory loading" of packages which is probably the worst kind for integrators to deal with unless they have automated tools for detecting those package conflicts.
Indeed, I do fully expect everything in the default "release" version of the Package Universe to actually work with the release it is intended to work with.
The kinds of conflicts I've found are _TRIVIAL_ to find. Just LOAD EVERYTHING. If you can't then something MUST be kicked out of the PU. Someone can fix the conflict later if they want the official "release" PU to include that something.
This level of QA testing for PU is trivial -- there's no valid excuse for not doing it. It doesn't even have to be automated -- just select everything and hit the install button. If it blows up then the PU is broken and useless and you go back a step and decide whether the thing causing the conflict is worth the effort of fixing, or whether the thing it might be conflicting with is really a higher priority to include or not. The next level of running all available unit tests should also be trivial and required for release PUs.
I would expect what you say to be true of SqueakMap, even a SqueakMap with proper dependency tracking and conflict management. SqueakMap does claim to be a one-size one-stop shop for everything after all. However I really do not expect the same problems of official "release" Package Universes, especially when the button is there in the default official release and everyone is told to push it and every official looking bit of documentation says it's been tested successfully to work with the intended release.
The kinds of conflicts I've found are _TRIVIAL_ to find. Just LOAD EVERYTHING. If you can't then something MUST be kicked out of the PU. Someone can fix the conflict later if they want the official "release" PU to include that something.
Unfortunately that's an unrealistic test for Package Universes.
There are sometimes two versions of the same or similar item, e.g 3 different Magma installations. Sometimes more than two versions of the same thing are present for various reasons. And finally you cant load 3 different Monticello's with Monticello.
Keith
On 16-Dec-2008, at 4:23 PM, Keith Hodges wrote:
The kinds of conflicts I've found are _TRIVIAL_ to find. Just LOAD EVERYTHING. If you can't then something MUST be kicked out of the PU. Someone can fix the conflict later if they want the official "release" PU to include that something.
Unfortunately that's an unrealistic test for Package Universes.
Hopefully you mean this only in the context of what you say below.
There are sometimes two versions of the same or similar item, e.g 3 different Magma installations. Sometimes more than two versions of the same thing are present for various reasons. And finally you cant load 3 different Monticello's with Monticello.
Well as I read the design goals for PU, there were not supposed to be multiple versions of things in a given PU now where there. Indeed various comments in the archives about the failure to meet this goal.
Practically though what I really meant was obviously to select just the most recent version of everything. That's time consuming with the current interface, especially with the pollution of so many deprecated versions of most packages, but not incredibly that hard to do, and I'm sure someone who knows the PU implementation could automate it in nearly a heartbeat.
I'm absolutely stunned that this most basic test has not been done as the minimal go/no-go test for every official "release" PU. Given the emphasis in the community on unit tests it's stunning that they are also not a go/no-go requirement for any official release too (image & PU, of course).
The tools are there! Why aren't they being used?
This level of QA testing for PU is trivial -- there's no valid excuse for not doing it.
In a volunteer community, yes there absolutely is. The valid excuse is "lack of resources" and it can only be fixed by someone (that means you) actually putting in the time and effort of doing it. How about it? You could start loading all the packages in order and see what the first one is that breaks? That'd be a start.
Cheers, - Andreas
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:
On 16-Dec-2008, at 12:00 AM, Andreas Raab wrote:
There are misunderstandings on both ends here. As a first-time user you naturally expect those things to "just work" so calling you a "heavy user" is not a good characterization for what you're doing. I would call this "exploratory loading" of packages which is probably the worst kind for integrators to deal with unless they have automated tools for detecting those package conflicts.
Indeed, I do fully expect everything in the default "release" version of the Package Universe to actually work with the release it is intended to work with.
The kinds of conflicts I've found are _TRIVIAL_ to find. Just LOAD EVERYTHING. If you can't then something MUST be kicked out of the PU. Someone can fix the conflict later if they want the official "release" PU to include that something.
This level of QA testing for PU is trivial -- there's no valid excuse for not doing it. It doesn't even have to be automated -- just select everything and hit the install button. If it blows up then the PU is broken and useless and you go back a step and decide whether the thing causing the conflict is worth the effort of fixing, or whether the thing it might be conflicting with is really a higher priority to include or not. The next level of running all available unit tests should also be trivial and required for release PUs.
I would expect what you say to be true of SqueakMap, even a SqueakMap with proper dependency tracking and conflict management. SqueakMap does claim to be a one-size one-stop shop for everything after all. However I really do not expect the same problems of official "release" Package Universes, especially when the button is there in the default official release and everyone is told to push it and every official looking bit of documentation says it's been tested successfully to work with the intended release.
On 16-Dec-2008, at 4:28 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
This level of QA testing for PU is trivial -- there's no valid
excuse
for not doing it.
In a volunteer community, yes there absolutely is. The valid excuse is "lack of resources" and it can only be fixed by someone (that means you) actually putting in the time and effort of doing it. How about it? You could start loading all the packages in order and see what the first one is that breaks? That'd be a start.
Sorry, no that is _not_ a valid excuse.
Someone made the official 3.10 PU. Someone even made the claim that everything in it had been tested to load (without even adding the qualifier "on its own"). Sadly they did not also do the obvious thing of trying to load the most recent version of everything in that PU. It is a simple, obvious, and easy test to do and would clearly have avoided all the troubles I have encountered. Running all unit tests is two or three clicks more.
Were I the person responsible for publishing that official PU I would never have done it in the first place if I couldn't have managed to take the time to do the basic QA testing I'm suggesting should have been done. Don't start something you can't finish and sure as heck don't publish a half-finished mess and make outrageous claims about it!
I think the real problem here isn't the lack of QA testing. The real problem is the attitude of how things apparently got selected to be included in the official release PU. It (for 3.10) has ended up being effectively just a much less usable collection of what seems to be a vast majority of what's also in SqueakMap, and with the only advantage in that it automatically selects known dependencies and sorts the installs topologically. Maybe this is useful enough for experts who know everything about what they know they want, but it sure as heck isn't something for anyone even at my level, let alone any true beginner.
The FunSqueak image might be better for beginners, but it has similar breakage as Pharo -- stuff might be loaded, but it still doesn't work. Running all SUnit tests in FunSqueak shows even more breakage everywhere in the image -- doing so actually core-dumps the VM on OSX not far into the over 7000 tests.
In an ideal world something like FunSqueak should be the product of a full load of everything in the official "release" PU, and it should be something in which all the SUnit tests run green after the load.
At least the 3.10.2-final-7179 image does pass most of the 2254 tests it includes (I get 2 failures on OSX)
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:
On 16-Dec-2008, at 4:28 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
This level of QA testing for PU is trivial -- there's no valid excuse for not doing it.
In a volunteer community, yes there absolutely is. The valid excuse is "lack of resources" and it can only be fixed by someone (that means you) actually putting in the time and effort of doing it. How about it? You could start loading all the packages in order and see what the first one is that breaks? That'd be a start.
Sorry, no that is _not_ a valid excuse.
Someone made the official 3.10 PU.
Are you actually using the 3.10 PU? Or the 'development' universe.
Open universe editor to find out.
Keith
On 16-Dec-2008, at 5:43 PM, Keith Hodges wrote:
Are you actually using the 3.10 PU? Or the 'development' universe.
Open universe editor to find out.
Hah! First I've heard of that thing!
It says "Developement" in the top field.
If that's not right then I'd say the official image is broken.
How do I change it to whatever it should be for the official 3.10 release? I.e. what do I type or paste into that field to replace the word "Development"?
Is someone going to fix 3.10.3 so that it uses the right PU?
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:
On 16-Dec-2008, at 5:43 PM, Keith Hodges wrote:
Are you actually using the 3.10 PU? Or the 'development' universe.
Open universe editor to find out.
Hah! First I've heard of that thing!
It says "Developement" in the top field.
If that's not right then I'd say the official image is broken.
How do I change it to whatever it should be for the official 3.10 release? I.e. what do I type or paste into that field to replace the word "Development"?
Is someone going to fix 3.10.3 so that it uses the right PU?
No, please don't.
Development is the universe that is currently being updated with the latest stuff. Most things in there are tested against 3.9 and 3.10, since thats what developers are using, so it is the most maintained.
Since 3.10 is the current released image then it is in the Development Universes that package load dependencies stands the best chance of being fixed.
This is what is called a compromise, and we know what needs to be done, and that is being done, just not in 3.10
Keith
On 16-Dec-2008, at 6:13 PM, Keith Hodges wrote:
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:
How do I change it to whatever it should be for the official 3.10 release? I.e. what do I type or paste into that field to replace the word "Development"?
So, I still don't know how to get to a proper "release" version of the PU to open when I press the "Package Universe Browser" button....
Is someone going to fix 3.10.3 so that it uses the right PU?
No, please don't.
Development is the universe that is currently being updated with the latest stuff. Most things in there are tested against 3.9 and 3.10, since thats what developers are using, so it is the most maintained.
Sorry, but that's just not reflective of the facts at the moment.
The "Development" PU is stinky peee-yooo! It's clearly not properly tested with even a minimum of attention to conflict avoidance. It's full of old useless garbage (i.e. tons of unnecessary old versions of almost every package). It's got some old junk that won't even work in any way at all on 3.10. It's a worse mess than SqueakMap because there's no hint as to what's been actually tested against the release being used.
It is of no real use to any beginner -- it's just a way to get people to give up and go away.
Since 3.10 is the current released image then it is in the Development Universes that package load dependencies stands the best chance of being fixed.
This is what is called a compromise, and we know what needs to be done, and that is being done, just not in 3.10
So the compromise is to keep what outsiders see as the one true official release full of untested garbage?
I'd say that's more of an outright failure instead of a compromise.
You don't put new users on the bleeding edge. That's just suicide.
If someone could tell me how to change my "Package Universe Browser" button to open a PU browser on the official 3.10 PU so that I could see what the official release PU should look like, and give it a go to see if I have any better luck with it, then maybe I could have a better opinion on whether or not it really would be better to set the default PU back to the 3.10 official release PU or not.
If the only workable compromise really is just to try to go forward then the best solution for helping new users in the immediate future is to do the following:
1. remove the default "Package Universe Browser" button from the 3.10.2 and subsequent patch release/updated images.
2. tell new users (on the main squeak.org page and the downloads page and any and all relevant Swiki pages) that they can get all the fun stuff from some image like the FunSqueak image, but be careful to only recommend the most stable and well tested version, not the bleeding edge where just running the unit tests will core dump the whole VM.
3. set up an email gateway so that the "mail report" button in the debugger actually goes somewhere where someone who can do something about PU problems will take notice and do something to actually make this forward progress. If I (or anyone else in my position) want to help and I use the "mail report" button to try to help by reporting problems I encounter, and then as a result I'm told that what I did is useless because my report didn't go to the right place then I'm just as likely to go away and leave you guys to your own mess.
Dear Greg,
some of us have spent a lot of time trying to improve things in work that has been made available SINCE 3.10's release.
However you are basically ignoring what people are trying to tell you, and insist on being negative and non-constructive. So I wont be replying any further.
If you want to be constructive and help please try 3.10.2bc as mentioned in a recent email, and contribute to the package definitions in the Packages-Library category there.
regards
Keith
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Andreas Raab -
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. -
Jerome Peace -
Keith Hodges