I started working on something like this - specifically, an option to
save the list of installed packages, so that it would be easy to then
install the same packages on a new image.

The problem is that packages need to be installed in a specific order,
and the save order isn't easy to access through SM, so I haven't been
able to make something that would work automatically (though it is
workable with a little human intervention).

Anyway, it would be enough for a "mail to list" enhancement, since those
descriptions are read by humans anyway.

Getting back to the subject at hand, note that it does have the problem
that it would require adding code to the "mail to list" which is
dependent on SM, which "mail bug to list" shouldn't be, so maybe there
should a registry of things that get to write something when "mailing
stuff to list"... :-)

Some code I used -
string _ ((SMSqueakMap default installedPackages collect: [:e | {e id
asString. '"', e name, e installedVersion,'"'}]) asArray) printString.

(Compiler evaluate: (string) contents) do: [:e | SMSqueakMap default
installPackageWithId: e first]

Daniel

Brent Vukmer <bvukmer at blackboard.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > As we near the release of 3.6, and enter the planning stage 
> > for 3.7, I'd like to offer a topic for rants, questions, 
> > ideas, designs and maybe even code, in the hope some people 
> > will find it useful/interesting enough to work on for 3.6.
> > 
> > The thing is that Squeak used to be a single system - 
> > whatever SqC released. But it is fast becoming a flexible 
> > combination of a platform (the image) that the community 
> > produces as a whole through the harvesting process, and a sea 
> > of packages cataloged by SM. 
> 
> I'd really like a dirt-simple, easy, automated way to build an image to
> someone else's system specs. 
> 
> By "system specs", I mean something pretty coarse-grained:
>  * Image version 
>  * Last update #
>  * Installed SM package-versions
> 
> I'd like this to be built into the "mail to list" functionality, so that
> [BUG][FIX][ENH] posts automatically have a system.specs file attached.