[not much about MC can be scaled back to make an installer]
That leaves us with a small trillema - 
* Do we bloat the default image with around 60 classes to support a
format that a user might never load?
* Do we make it require manual installation of Monticello before people
can install mcvs from SM?
* Do we expect developers to work with mcv files, but makes releases
using .st files? this makes it harder for users of a package to become
developers, which think we should avoid.

BTW, from a quick glance at MC, seems to me that the following might be
removable -
* Tests
* UI
* Mocks
* Storing 
* Merging
* Patching?

The code left is not trivial, but it is significantly less. Including it
in Basic might not be unreasonable. The fact that it includes a
declarative model of code might be considered an advantage in some
circles ;-)

Daniel

Avi Bryant <avi at beta4.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
> 
> > What's one to do? when an mcv package is installed, or first modified in
> > the image, it should automatically appear in the workingCopy browser,
> > and a pristine copy saved in the repository. This gives anyone that
> > installed the package an official release to reference.
> 
> If you load an mcv package, it does appear in the working copy browser.
> The problem is that you were loading it is a .st file.
> 
> There's no need to save a pristine copy "in the repository" - presumably
> you were loading it from some repository anyway.  This may not be clear,
> but you can have multiple repositories defined; when looking for a
> version, Monticello will search through all of them.
> 
> Some kind of a version cache would be useful for performance reasons,
> though.
> 
> > If MC already does this, then my only complaint is that Monticello (and
> > every other package) should be packaged using Monticello ;-)
> 
> We'll get there :).
> 
> > What is the state of the current Monticello as a deployment format? with
> > regards to a minimal installer package to be included with SM and such.
> 
> Well, I guess the question is what should be in that minimal package.
> Which features do you leave out?  You could drop the UI but that's not
> much code anyway... ditto merging.  Everything else you pretty much need
> just to load an mcv file.
> 
> There is the MCBootstrapLoader class, which is a single class that can get
> a Monticello.mcv file loaded well enough to then properly load other mcv
> files.  But you don't want to be using this as your SM installer.
> 
> Avi