"Doug Way" <dway at mailcan.com> writes:

> Given that, there's a good chance that the code you have might work with
> Squeak 3.2...?

No, it was an experimental code and doesn't work with Squeak3.2-4956
due to some (major it seems) modifications in Interpreter between 3.0
to 3.2

> On Tue, 07 Jun 2005 18:16:07 +0200, "Samir Saidani"
> <saidani at info.unicaen.fr> said:
>> I don't know if there was a final 3.1, but think it's important to
>> backup the alpha, beta and gamma version too. For instance, I wanted
>> to try an old squeak code which seems to work with 3.1alpha : with
>> this old squeak version, it's more easy to see what I have to port
>> (because I can see the old references to the image and compare with a
>> new image).
>
> Well, there's only so much server space out there, so I don't think I
> agree.  The problem is that there is not a small number of alpha
> versions of Squeak... there's usually a few hundred updates in every
> alpha cycle, so that means potentially hundreds of Squeak alpha
> versions.  Which ones do you pick to put on the server?  (I suppose you
> could pick a few, but I'm not sure it's worth bothering.)

Ok, I thought that there was official alpha/beta/gamma releases to get
a kind of state of reference for each stage.

> The usual way to get back to an old alpha release is to get the previous
> final release (3.0 in this case), set it to 3.1alpha (see SystemVersion
> doit on the swiki), then do an "update from server" up to the update you
> want to go to.  Admittedly this can be tricky with really old images,
> because sometimes old images point to outdated update servers, that
> might have to be set as well.

Mm, sounds interesting : it would be really fun (I explain why in the
end of the mail) if I have a 3.0 and want to go on a 3.1a-4173 to only
specify the destination and get the desired image. Is it realistic
from a given image 3.x-aaaa to go on a 3.y-bbbb without consistency
problems ? This would provide a more fine-grained way to get any given
image than the ftp site.


> As a general rule, it's irresponsible to write code for public
> consumption which only works on an alpha version of Squeak, if it's a
> standalone thing and not intended as a fix/enhancement for the update
> stream.  Of course, that may not be the case with the code you're
> talking about... maybe it's your own private bit of code or something
> that was intended as a fix/enh.

Of course, this was not a public code, but cvs experimental code and
now the project is for the moment without any activities. So I'm
playing with to see if it can live. Without access on the 3.1a it was
designed in (and probably it was on the mind of people working on it
to make a release for 3.2, but their own life or other reason doesn't
permit that), you might say that it should be really difficult and
time-consuming to see what is the problem when fileIn this code in 3.2
+ the problem of the code itself, and hence a real hindrance to give a
new life to this projet... 

You talk about responsability but I think the problem is maybe more
complex : imagine that you need for your alpha experimental standalone
thing the latest development of the Squeak image, so you take the
3.xa-####, you work on it, and then for some reason, you cannot
continue and stop. We must have freedom to continue this work without
dissipating energy, and so must have the possibility to start from the
same image 3.xa-####. A kind of development process interruptable at
anytime (a metaphore should be to crash the image at anytime and get
the same state after the crash, here there is a crash in the
development process). This sounds reasonable, no ?

Samir

-- 
Samir SAIDANI				
PhD Student in CS / Doctorant en informatique 	web : http://www.info.unicaen.fr/~saidani
Universite de Caen - Laboratoire GREYC          tel : 02-31-56-74-30
Equipe MAD - Campus II - 14032 Caen Cedex       fax : 02-31-56-76-30