To Traits Or Not To Traits (Was: Re: Stefs roadmap for 3.9, time to get it nailed down)

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Thu Feb 24 03:04:57 UTC 2005


How about waiting until the beginning of a release cycle to make a major
change like adding Traits?  I assume it is likely to bring out a lot of
bugs?  If we do it at the beginning of a release cycle, then we can take
our time and get the bugs out.

Also, how are the Traits tools, at this point?  Are there browser
updates, etc., so that people can use them like a normal developer
instead of imagining what it will be like in the brave future?  (Or
acting like an icky files+compilers developer?  :))

> What we're missing is Unstable, where  
> people are allowed to throw in mostly anything they seem fit. So you can  
> actually work with stuff, see how it behaves, before deciding on whether  
> to move it on to Testing (which is the doorkeeper to Stable, sort of). The  
> Unstable update stream is a good step in this direction, maybe we should  
> make it more prominent and push it a little more?
> Have some very lightweight 'decision process', maybe a checklist, for  
> adding stuff to Unstable?

The only thing we have is unstable, and that's both 3.8 and 3.9.  I
don't think that having separate 3.9 unstable is what we want in the
long run, but whatever.

Debian doesn't make a "stable" release by shipping a Linux kernel that
is stable and then saying good luck.  They also ship thousands of
packages, none of which have a "release critical" bug that is still open
on the bug tracker.  We don't even have either (a) release critical bugs
or (b) a released set of packages.  

For (a) someone simply needs to install a suitable bug tracker.  We
could even use Debian's, I'd think.

For (b), both SqueakMap and Package Universes could be used.  Package
Universes supports this out of the box: use one universe for development
and testing, and one universe for each set of packages.  You'd set the
policies different for each kind of universe: development universes are
wide open to changes, while stable universes require the twelve sacred
humpalumphs to gather and perform a 3-day long ritual before a package
is allowed to go in.

On SqueakMap, I believe you could use tags, *if* they were adjusted so
that any old yahoo can't just add a "stable" tage to a package whenever
they like.  Alternatively, I think Goran mentioned some sort of compound
package that might work: a compound package would be a package that has
a list of pointers to other packages.

Anyway, I mean to post more on this eventually, but wanted to toss this
out since you mentioned it.


-Lex



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