Brad Fuller wrote:
> On Saturday 27 August 2005 01:25 pm, Ross Boylan wrote:
>  > Having development at the head seems like pretty standard practice to
>  > me.
> 
> In my experience, it is common for the trunk to be the released/stable 
> version and branches to be work in progress. Individuals or groups can 
> work on a branch independently, do their own testing, etc. and then 
> merge back to trunk when testing is complete and everyone agrees that 
> the particular branch (or portions) is now the stable version. The 
> squeak group is informal, so I don't believe more formal mgmt is needed.
> 
> What I would suggest is that the known, agreed, stable source for 3.7 
> (maybe that's the tarball at Ian's) is placed in a new trunk. Then a 
> branch or branches can be created that contain the current work of others.
> 
> This may or may not go down well with others, but it guarantees that 
> someone can grab the current trunk, build and they get the same result 
> as what has been released.

Different groups have different styles of work and we (the VM 
maintainers) have long adopted a style which does not assume that HEAD 
is always the latest stable version but rather provide explicit file 
releases. The main reasons being that there is no conceptual difference 
between checking out HEAD or using a stable file release and to allow us 
to move forward so that we know the order in which pending changes get 
integrated. This is in particular important since the main ports have 
maintainers with very different schedules and requiring everyone to get 
in sync before allowing to make a change to the trunk would probably 
deadlock the entire group.

> I would suggest that we need agreement from those who know that
> file: Squeak-3.7-7.src.tar.gz (I assume) is "the" last known good stable 
> source.

I would suggest that you take the discussion to VM-dev if you want any 
resolution.

> Then, we need to find the other platform vm sources to create the stable 
> trunk (I need these eventually, too)

Win32: http://squeak.hpl.hp.com/win32/release/Squeak-Win32-3.7.1-src.zip

> It might be that the current trunk is pretty close already. I don't know.

For Windows, no. I still haven't gotten around to update the VM sources 
to 3.8 - in other words if we would follow your proposed model the trunk 
would be stuck at 3.7 which I would find an extremely unpleasant situation.

> But, IMO, the trunk should build and work, period. People shouldn't have 
> to be hunting down this or that to get it to build. And, the build 
> should be identical to the currently released version of squeak.

The only reliable form to get a guarantueed version of the VM is (and 
has always been, back to '96) to get a file release (tar ball) 
containing everything that has been used to build the VM you are using. 
The versions change, mind you and having HEAD apply to 
whatever-the-latest doesn't help you one bit if you don't use 
whatever-the-latest. With file releases you get *exactly* everything the 
maintainer has been using for the VM you are using and you even know 
when a maintainer hasn't done whatever-the-latest; such as the absence 
of a 3.8 Windows VM. Put differently, if you ever have a problem with 
the 3.2.1 Windows VM you go grab 
http://squeak.hpl.hp.com/win32/release/Squeak-Win32-3.2.1-src.zip and 
get *exactly* the sources that have been used for the VM you are 
running, period. AFAIK, Ian has generally been following the same policy.

Also, the set of maintainers has been working together in some form or 
other for almost ten years now and you should at least consider the 
possibility that there are reasons for why things are the way they are. 
They work for us. And If you think we're all morons who don't know Jack 
you are of course free to set up an alternative repository and show the 
superiority of your ways. We'll discuss the results in 2015 ;-)

Cheers,
   - Andreas