Hi,
	I wonder if, for a couple of reasons, we shouldn't rethink 
the whole concept of Squeak releases.  First, Squeak is quite
stable, even the alpha/testPilot/unstable versions most of the time.
Second a lot of cool new features keep popping up in the newer 
images, whether they are things such as the JPEG movies just
added or UI enhancements.  Third, while many bugs are fixed, 
very few of the bug fixes find their way back into old versions,
even if those versions are yet to be released.  3.1 springs to mind.
There just doesn't seem to be the interest there.  Most people on
this list seem to keep up with the current set of updates.  It is just
too hard to ignore the most recent cool set of changes.  The flip
side to this is that back ported bug fixes aren't
tested by 10s or 100s of people daily like the current set of
updates are tested.

	Maybe a better choice would be to do snapshots.  For example,
3.2alpha seems fairly stable right now.  Maybe there could be a
freeze on updates for N units of time, and if no one finds some 
horrible bug we just call that say 3.2 and be done with it.
The only change that I would recommend is that in one of the
welcome windows, near the top since no one reads past the first
page of readmes, there should be some words along the lines
that this is just a snapshot and you should join the email list
and/or keep checking the web site and ftp site for new 
snapshots.  We should probably think about doing snapshots
every M units of time, maybe every two months or so.
If snapshots end up appearing every few months maybe
the startup code should warn if the image is more than
6 months stale.  The snapshots don't have to be hard 
freezes either.  If some snapshot has some horrible bug then
it can just be replaced with a more recent one.  One of the
ideas is to remove the finality of calling things releases.

	The download page on the ftp site would just list the most recent
N snapshots and the VMs for the different systems.

	I think the advantage of this are that the "releases" would
coorespond closer to what the active Squeak community
is actually using, and would therefore have the chance of
having the most recent bugs actually fixed.  For those who need
a reference it would still exist, it just would be the 
30/11/2001 snapshot perhaps, rather than 3.2.  I think
the other advantage is that this moves the Squeak 
release process closer to the reality, even if it
isn't exactly the reality we might like.

	The disadvantage?  Squeak does not end up with
nice clean releases.  OTOH, many other software projects
really don't have clean software releases either.  How
many patches/service packs/updates/whatever have
you installed this past year?

Anyway, this is just an idea.  Thoughts?

cheers

bruce

Dan Ingalls <Dan at SqueakLand.org> wrote:
> Folks -
> 
> I am now "clearing my desk" prefatory to finally getting Henrik's Modules out (sorry, I just got swamped a month ago).  One thing that remains to be completed is to release 3.1, but as I reflect on this, I wonder if we mightn't just put 3.2 into gamma status, let people beat on it for a week, and release THAT instead.  Here are some reasons:
> 
> 	It has a bunch of cool new stuff not in 3.1
> 	It seems pretty stable
> 	If has if anything more fixes than 3.1 right now
> 	We are (honest ;-) about to enter a real test-pilot period
> 
> I don't care a lot one way or the other, but I think this would be a bit less work for me as well.
> 
> How to make the decision?  Well, assume I've decided to do this, and only send mail if you are strongly opposed.  If no one complains in the next day or two, that's what I'll do.
> 
> Thanks
> 	- Dan