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.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: loadUpdatesTweak-dew.cs.gz
Type: application/x-gzip
Size: 1213 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20050305/8058fbf2/loadUpdatesTweak-dew.cs.bin


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list