Hi Brian and all!
Brian Ingerson ingy@ttul.org wrote: [SNIP]
I have some concern about muddying the waters as to where to look for Squeak packages - as I think Ned mentioned, SqueakMap has gained a lot of momentum and mind share lately, and if FreePAN is going to work for the Squeak community we'll have to be careful to coordinate/integrate with SqueakMap, not compete with it.
Definitely. It seems that FreePAN just offers SqueakMap mirroring. This is something SqueakMap appears not to have. Same with Ruby and RAA.
First of all - if I haven't already said so - I am all ears for coordination/integration/cooperation - that is always good. Mind though that SqueakMap may have an architecture (especially upcoming 1.1) that might make it a bit "incompatible" - I am not sure though just noting it for the record.
Well, in fact SqueakMap has mirroring - sort of - we just haven't set up any mirrors yet. :-) Ehrm. A mirror of SqueakMap is easily set up by simply setting up another server (identical code) and having it regularly update itself from the master and disabling the web UI for changing the model. No code to be written for this.
Setting one up is on my todo-list but so is also getting SM1.1 out of the door... And SM1.1 will offer more interesting replication with the added ability to have additional "local" content.
SM works by mirroring itself down to the client using a transaction model which makes it theoretically much more efficient than rsync. It also makes it "smartness capable" - the transactions are actually messages that get replayed at the client and the client modifies the local mirror accordingly. At that time it can "react" to the transactions etc.
In SM1.1 I plan to let a mirror be able to have local changes (like an added local package for example) that can optionally be "published" to a selected master higher up in the hierarchy.
This means that a person can have private packages in his/her local SM and a company or organisation can have companywide packages not visible outside the company etc.
It also means that modifications to the map can be applied locally and then published (compared to the current model where modifications to the map can only be applied on the master through the web UI).
Anyway, enough blabbering about that. :-)
I suspect that FreePAN may offer other features too, but I'd leave it up to the Language Managers as to how much they want.
Competition is not bad in itself. I am completely open to building bridges to other facilities. But I'm also interested in offering an alternative to CPAN for Perl, which in many ways has stagnated.
The best way to collaborate here I think is by:
1. Explaining our architectures to each other and learn good stuff. 2. Building a bridge from SqueakMap to FreePAN so that SqueakMap is mirrored into FreePAN. The other direction will be harder I think.
SqueakMap is an architecture heavily focused on Squeak and should remain so. But if there is interest in mirroring the SM content on FreePAN then of course, why not! Personally I am not sure though what the advantage would be - don't mistake me for being negative here - I just need to get the advantages explained to me. :-)
But I don't think I want to limit the development of SM to be constrained by a common possibly simpler model of packages - note though that I haven't read up enough on FreePAN to be sure it is simpler - it's just a guess. SM1.1 will for example have releases of packages maintained as separate "records", does FreePAN have something similar?
BTW, I'm trying very hard not to over-architect this project. I want maximum payback for effort. Especially my effort. I want it to be something the community maintains.