Prompt for updates (was Re: For 3.8 - [ENH] pristineImage-gk)
Doug Way
dway at mailcan.com
Sun Mar 6 04:19:31 UTC 2005
Apologies to Michael & Goran for moving a private email to squeak-dev,
but I think this one's worth a bit of public discussion...
This is regarding update 6598 for 3.8g, which adds a prompt which will
come up the first time a fresh 3.8 final image is started up, asking if
the user wants to check for post-release updates.
On Mar 4, 2005, at 6:13 AM, Michael Rueger wrote:
> goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:
>> Hi Michael!
>> I am fine with that solution, as long as:
>> 1. It works! :) I mean, prefs can't be in some directory outside of
>> the
>> image tripping this up, can it? If I unpack a fresh image in a dir
>> where
>> other images live/lived.
>
> It uses a plain (internal) preference, not the ExternalSettings.
Looks good.
>> 2. You perhaps tweak the message a bit. I would like to make it clear
>> that there may be "post release crucial fixes" etc that they should
>> load. They are newbies after all - "updates" doesn't explain much to
>> them.
Right. Although I notice Apple uses the term "Software Update" for
their equivalent auto-updating mechanism, so people probably generally
know what "update" means. But yeah, it should be very clear.
>> Or en extra sentence like "If this is a fresh distributed Squeak,
>> you should try to load updates to get any crucial post release fixes".
>
> "Do you want to check for updates
> or maintenance fixes on the server?"
I'm going to be even more picky than Goran and see if it can be made
extra clear for beginners that it will be checking for post-release
fixes. Most of the people seeing this prompt will be using it for
post-release fixes (I'm guessing it will be turned off by default in
the alpha releases, though maybe not), and in any case the relatively
expert alpha users will already know what it means.
Maybe something like:
"Do you want to check for post-release fixes or other updates on the
server?"
Hrm, I guess that's only slightly better. :-)
Actually, maybe it's best just to show a different message for a final
release versus an alpha/beta release. The attached changeset does
this, and adds a method SystemVersion>>isReleaseVersion which returns
true for a final release. (SystemVersion should know this stuff
anyway.)
So, we can have a simpler message for alpha/beta:
"Do you want to check for Squeak3.9alpha updates on the server?"
And for the final release we can ask:
"Do you want to check for stable post-release updates to Squeak3.8 on
the server?"
(Or similar... suggestions welcome. Hm, after rewording them both,
they ended up pretty similar.)
I was going to say "post-release fixes" but I like "updates" a bit more
because it implies updating to a new version number, e.g. 3.8.1. Which
brings up another point... some folks have argued for having tertiary
(e.g. 3.8.x) version numbers assigned if we're going to have
post-release fixes. I strongly agree with this, and think we should
start doing it as soon as possible, preferably with 3.8.
The only minor problem I can see is making sure that 3.8.3 is still
treated the same as 3.8 as far as SqueakMap is concerned. (I think
SqueakMap is about the only tool which really does much with the Squeak
version number.) Obviously people should not have to list their
packages as being compatible with 3.8, 3.8.1, 3.8.2, etc by hand. I
guess SystemVersion>>majorMinorVersion already works for this, which is
what SqueakMap uses.
And of course, we should have strict standards for post-release fixes,
that they should be non-invasive and generally non-API changing. E.g.
it should be extremely rare for an external package to work with Squeak
3.8, but not work with 3.8.2. (While we all know that it's relatively
common for an external package which works with Squeak 3.7 to not work
with 3.8.)
How often would we bump the tertiary version number? Probably not too
often. But it would make sense to do it each time the final release
bundles are updated at http://squeak.org.
- Doug
p.s The attached changeset also fixes a few typos in
AutoStart>>processUpdates. And adds class comments for SystemVersion
*and* AutoStart! :) I will also try to attach this to the appropriate
bug/fix on Mantis.
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