About squeak image compatibility (3.6/7/8)

Peter Crowther Peter at ozzard.org
Sun Jan 8 22:30:08 UTC 2006


> From: [...] stéphane ducasse
> Because right now I put my name on 3.9 and I want it to work.

That's fine.  Other people have put their names on other variants, such as SqueakLight, Spoon, Tweak...  The Squeak community *has* fragmented; development *has* de-facto forked - the biggest fork being pushing traits into one version.  I think the jury's presently out as to which fork will become the most widely used.

To me, "3.9" is merely considered a special version because it is published on the Web site that contains previous versions and because it continues the existing version numbering scheme.  Practically, it's a mutation that includes traits, where some of the other versions do not.  I'd happily base something on Spoon, for example, in the expectation that I'd be able to port it to a wider range of Smalltalks than if I based it on 3.9 as it now. 

As for Cees' rant on backwards compatibility and "4.0", who cares?  It's broken now with traits; let's throw the remaining rotting subsystems out of 3.9 before it's released and start with something smaller.

		- Peter



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