Don't let anyone tell you otherwise...
Here's all the proof you need:
Several years ago I complained to Ian that I couldn't build squeak with the Croquet-crucial B3D plugins. I eventually found that the problem went away with the item $(X_LIBS) appended to make.prg.in.
He gave me a patronizing explaination of why that was stupid. He said he would correct the problem.
I have continued to experience this problem time and time again, each time I complain to him that it is still broken.
Now that many more months have passed, I, and my imperfect memory, forgot about the issue. Only when I remembered the problem I thought to re-apply my time-tested patch to get a successful build. GAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!
Anyway, now that I'm back in the VM hacking game, here's my idea...
There have been several suggestions for incompatible changes to the VM. Because it is still desirable to support older images (notably my workhorse 3.7 image with all my stuff in it...) I have come up with the idea of the "helper image"... The "helper image" is basically a patch that is applied to the main image at load time that includes the stuff the older image needs. (I'm planning an all out war on special objects, especially "Display").