On Monday, July 28, 2003, at 05:01  AM, Andreas Raab wrote:

>> If all you want to do is load a package into an image, Monticello
>> provides an "export" command that does a conventional fileout of the
>> package. You can post that on SM or stick it in a sar as usual. That
>> said, Monticello isn't really a packaging tool. It's a versioning 
>> tool,
>> which may not be what you're looking for.
>
> All I'm looking for is something really simple: A way of shipping a 
> package
> so that people who receive it a) are not required to have any 
> particular
> package (be that DVS or Monticello or whatever) before they can even 
> look at
> it and b) those people who do have the particular package are capable 
> of
> loading it into their existing environment.

I'm not sure I understand point b).

Let me apply this to the situation at hand, and you can tell me how I'm 
doing:

a) You want a way of shipping Balloon3D such that people don't have to 
have Monticello in their image in order to load B3D.

b1) those people who already *do* have Monticello in their image can 
use it to load B3D, receiving the benefit of dependency checking etc.

-- or --

b2) those people who have an older version of B3D already in their 
image and have made changes to that older version can update to the 
newer version of B3D without losing the changes they have made.

What you wrote above parses as b1 to me, but your comment elsewhere in 
the thread suggests b2. Monticello currently supports all three of 
these, but not at the same time. To get a) you do an export to standard 
.st, for b1) and b2) you need to use .mcv, and you need to have 
Monticello loaded. Am I correct in understanding that this is the 
source of your frustration?

I'm not sure if  you read my long post about the state of Monticello, 
but basically it boils down to this: Avi and I decided to release 
Monticello because it's reached a base level of functionality that 
makes it useful, without relying on external tools like CVS. Right now 
it meets (many of) our own needs for various projects.

Personally, I'm committed to taking it in whatever direction meets the 
needs of the Squeak community at large, as we discover them. If 
Monticello falls short of your needs in some way, I'd like to address 
that.

Colin