Packaging Squeak for Debian and info on Stable Squeak

Stephen Stafford stephen at clothcat.demon.co.uk
Wed May 23 17:26:03 UTC 2001


On Wednesday 23 May 2001  2:39 pm, Joshua Channing Gargus wrote:
> On Wed, May 23, 2001 at 02:42:17AM -0700, Gran Hultgren wrote:

> >
> > Well... perhaps I am missing something, but why do they need to
> > conflict?

If they use any of the same filenames in the base hierarchy (/usr/bin, 
/usr/share/doc, /usr/man, etc) then they would have to conflict.

I assumed that they would do this, perhaps I am wrong, I have not 
looked at Squeak Stable much yet.

>
> I completely agree with this.  Using Squeak .debs would probably
> involve copying the .image and .changes files into your own directory
> out of /usr/local/whatever, and sharing a common copy of the
> VM/.sources files. Since many people have multiple divergent images
> for different purposes anyway, why should they be forced to always
> start from the same image?

They aren't.  Looking at what Marcus has provided in his .debs (and it 
looks so sensible I have no intention of changing it) there is a little 
wrapper called squeak which is executable from /usr/bin.  This wrapper 
checks to see if the image exists in ~/.squeak/, if it does then it 
uses that image and calls the real executable, squeakvm with that set 
as the image file to use.  If it doesn't then it copies the 
(supposedly) clean base image from /usr/share/squeak.  The user should 
only ever be using his own copy of the image file.  It should be 
impossible (unless he bypasses the wrapper) to contaminate the clean 
image in /usr/share/squeak.

>
> Could the packages even use the same VM?  The recent 3d changes mean
> that circa-2.8 3d won't work on a new VM, but Stable Squeak has shed
> the 3d stuff for now.  I guess there's been a few other changes that
> might mess things up.  In any event, it's not such a bit deal to have
> a couple of VMs; they're small, especially compared to the bloated
> crap like Navigator that I find on my machine now.

I haven't looked yet.  If the only difference between Squeak-orig and 
Squeak-stable is the image file then it is probably worth letting them 
use the same VM...then have the image selected by the user via a 
debconf question, or similar mechanism.  If they need different VMs 
then it just means more packages.  We might find ourselves running out 
of sensible namespace.  (one alternative...if the Squeak-stable image 
can't use the Squeak-classic VM, is the reverse true?  Can the 
Squeak-classic image run on the Squeak-stable VM?...I am running the 
3.0 image on the 2.8 VM currently because I haven't gotten around to 
installing the v3 VM yet, it appears to work just fine so far)

As ever...any and all ideas/feedback welcome

-- 
Stephen Stafford
GPG public key on request





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