Given the current state of things, it is important to have tools for
shrinking.  I've been programming in Smalltalk for 20 years, and I've
seen lots of different tools.  My conclusion is that the "shrinking"
model is flawed, and it would be better to focus on making Squeak
"growable".

If you develop in an image and have no way of getting all your code
out of an image then you are in trouble.  Images are fragile.  You
can't merge images.  If you want to give your code to someone else, or
if they want to give it to you, one of you has to move code out of the
image and give it to someone else.  So, it is important to keep your
code in files, whether as .cs files or in Monticello.

If your code is in files, there is no argument against growing an
image.  Sure, you will develop in a huge "dev" image.  But it is built
out of components and many of those components are not used by your
application.  It is a lot easier to shrink a build script than to
shrink an image.  You could have a tool that automatically shrinks
your build script by deleting packages one by one and seeing if your
application still runs all its tests.

Shrinking an image is hard work and not for the faint of heart.  I
always tell my students to build their application first and worry
about shrinking at the end.  That is because they will be a lot better
at Smalltalk at the end of the project than at the beginning, and so
they will be better able to learn to shrink their image.

-Ralph