Daniel Vainsencher <danielv at netvision.net.il> wrote on 07.05.2003 
22:19:30: 
>What do *we* need to do to avoid our pool of packages from becoming
>forks? as I said, we need for all images to share a "base". So the
>derivative images should avoid patching that. We need our packages to
>follow policies (which we'll need to invent). Part of which is that
>packages are modules and it is very very bad manners for your package 
>to patch another's code. Especially those of base. Distro's should 
>have ZERO loose methods. It's all base + packages. That should mostly 
>do the trick. 

Hi Daniel

I hope you didn't forget that we already agreed on having ONE release 
which is going to be maintained and thoroughly tested AND an outer 
circle of packages which reside on SM, which are not Squeak-official, 
which may be experimental and which will not necessarily be maintained 
etc. 

The release is expected to consist of three images in the next step: 
Minimal, Basic and Full. Full is what today is the monolithic image. 
These 3 images can and should be made up of packages and they are like 
onion-skins. 

To have something like TrueTypeTextStyle in the release, it must be 
moved from the outer circle into there. After this inclusion the 
package TTFS will be part of the official Squeak, the Squeak which is 
to be released, and it will stay there in the future. 

To move it into the release a decision to do so is NEEDED.

Your magic trick with which you think you can 'avoid forking' will not 
change this. You said the guides duty is not to have a vision for 
Squeak and some guides may not be interested that much in Multimedia 
that they want to take on such a decision and that people should 
'sell' their wish of inclusion to the guides. I think not the code of 
the one who _sells best_ should be included, the _best code_ or the 
_most needed function_ has to be chosen. 

It seems to be that Squeak lacks someone who wants to make such 
decisions and is able to do so. Perhaps it is not appropriate for me 
to make such a proposal, but after all this discussion in this list, I 
must say I think Andreas ( along with Doug ) should make these 
decisions. Of course with previous discussions with the rest of the 
world. 

A last word about combinations of packages and forking. The fact that 
quite some people on the list feel unsure about this trend of 
modularization should make you and Göran a bit less optimistic about 
the 'magic' of loadscripts and friends. As you hopefully remember I 
already wrote some posts regarding this. Therefore only this: It is 
much easier to develop a monolithic image than to have many packages 
which are developed isolated, not the other way round. Given the 
problems of the image today we should really be humble ( at least in 
the beginning :-) 

regards
Martin