On Saturday, November 22, 2003, at 04:09 PM, goran.krampe at bluefish.se 
wrote:

> Avi Bryant <avi at beta4.com> wrote:
> [SNIP]
>> Surely you mean the "Full" release?  I thought we were supposed to be
>> taking things *out* of the "Basic" release.
>
> My understanding is:
>
> 1. Full is almost what say 3.5 is, but may grow with more stuff we 
> think
> is simply too good to be missed. But Full (like Basic) is not an image 
> -
> it is the result of installing a list of additional packages on top of
> Basic.
>
> 2. Basic is not an image either in fact! Basic is actually the sum of
> the shrinking image and a list of packages being installed on top of 
> it.
> It is also the thing that the update stream is maintaining.
>
> 3. Minimal (I think we agreed to call it, or was it Kernel?) is the
> image with all SM packages NOT installed.
>
> So, IMHO this means that we surely can add stuff to Basic, as long as 
> we
> add them *as packages* and thus not enlarging the Minimal image.

Yep, this is all correct.  The only additional point I'd add is that 
the Basic release is intended to be the "IDE" release, containing all 
the essential developer tools.

So yes, we could add additional packages to Basic as appropriate.  The 
only question is whether the RegExp package is something we want to 
include with the default set of developer tools.  I personally probably 
wouldn't use it, but it could be useful for a lot of people... it might 
be worth including.  There are other developer tools such as the 
Refactoring Browser that I think should probably be in Basic... it 
would be great to have as a "standard" tool.  Yes, the Refactoring 
Browser is large, but the Basic release does not really need to be 
especially small.  "Minimal" will be available for those who need 
something tiny.

> This is
> generally done by issuing an update that simply installs it from SM.
>
> And the above has been a problem with SM1.x, but with SM2 it works fine
> because it can refer to a specific release and not just "the release
> currently on SM". This means it doesn't matter when the update is 
> loaded
> - which is very important.

Yes, this will be easier for me to do once SM2 has replaced SM1.x.  
With SM1.x, instead of issuing an update that installs from SM, I have 
to include the package changeset itself as an update. (in order to 
guarantee a specific version)

- Doug