Here's a progress report on what the Version 3.9 Team has been up to recently.
We've been involed in an active discussion on the Packages team mailing list about a partitioning of the 3.8 image into packages, using the Impara iSqueak approach discussed briefly on squeak-dev. This will have a huge impact on how the 3.9 release proceeds, of course, so most other 3.9 activities are on hold until this is resolved. To read the discussion, see: http://discuss.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?10
It looks like we will probably proceed with some variant of this plan for 3.9alpha. This will basically mean that the Squeak 3.9alpha image will no longer be updated via an update stream comprised purely of traditional changesets, which contain primarily code changes and the occasional do-it. All of the code in the image would be assigned to a set of Monticello packages. "Loading updates" in a 3.9alpha image would instead typically merely update to the latest version of each package in the release repository. However, on occasion if a do-it is needed to load code in a certain order or massage instances in the image, those would still be done via the update stream, along with a "config map" specifying a certain set of packages to load. See the iSqueak thread on squeak-dev and on the Packages mailing list for more details.
So, we are trying to proceed with this. At this point the next step is to set up the "3.9 Release" Monticello repository, which will probably be the SqueakSource repository at Berne. This is currently waiting on a new server.
Note that doing this almost certainly means that 3.9alpha will be "starting over" from 3.8 final. There is an existing 3.9alpha update stream with some enhancements in it (although not that many), but this will likely be abandoned. This is for a few reasons:
1. The initial iSqueak package partitioning was done with a 3.8 final image, we'd like to use this as a starting point and not have to try to re-do the partitioning in the existing 3.9alpha image.
2. The final AbstractString cleanup was only done in 3.8 final, not in 3.9alpha, and we'd rather not have to re-do that either.
3. There have been some concerns about the UI performance with the Smallland changes made in the 3.9alpha stream. Since these haven't been addressed, there is some preference for reverting these changes.
If we abandon the previous 3.9alpha stream, it will probably be renamed to something like "3.9alphaold" in the master updates.list file, so that the history is still there, but it's no longer active. We'll then start over with a new "3.9alpha" stream, which can be updated to from 3.8final with a do-it.
There are some other enhancements in the old 3.9alpha stream which we don't want to lose... we'll need to back-port those into the new package-ized 3.9alpha stream.
Of course, we want to get all of this going fairly soon, as harvesting for 3.9 is pretty much at a stand-still until the new 3.9 process is started. (Harvesting can still proceed for the 3.8.x series of releases, though.)
On a side note, once we get this going, we may want to create a Harvesting team with its own team leader. The Janitors team and the V3.9 team are both important, but they don't really cover everything in the harvesting process. Or, the Janitors team could also take on some harvesting duties.
There is also a swiki page for V3.9 at http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5645 , which lists some of the potential large content items for 3.9, once we get the above process working. The timing for the final release will probably be 5-6 months from the time the new process is working, unless something else comes up, such as coordination with some other release.
- Doug
On 6/20/05, Doug Way dway@mailcan.com wrote:
So, we are trying to proceed with this. At this point the next step is to set up the "3.9 Release" Monticello repository, which will probably be the SqueakSource repository at Berne. This is currently waiting on a new server.
I don't think a ugly box full of chips and wires and other thingies is worth stalling. I have a machine at Hetzner that is unloaded and waiting for some action - just shout and I'll be more than happy to put the 3.9 release repository on there, including a SqueakSource image if that's necessary.
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