[squeak-dev] Waiting for 3.11 artifacts.

Göran Krampe goran at krampe.se
Tue Dec 9 12:00:36 UTC 2008


Hi all!

First of all - great thread!! :) I could ask questions and comment on 
hundreds of things but I am letting the current people hash it out for 
now. One thing I would like someone to do though is to "distill" this 
thread into at least a Swiki page on the Squeak Swiki! :)

But a bit of comments anwyay:

Keith Hodges wrote:
> Jerome Peace wrote:
>> I personally do not want to have to understand what is on the pbwiki or to navigate keith's new ways of doing things in order to play and test out a new squeak image.
>>
>> What unsettles me at the moment is that two very powerful programmers are taking 3.11 in some very new directions relative to what the community is used to.
>>   
> The alternative was officially nothing. I piped up when the board were
> considering cancelling 3.11
> 
> So anything is better than nothing, perhaps?

Indeed and I have repeatedly asked for a clarification on the 3.11 
status and how "official" it is! Now I hope it is FULLY official and 
that Matthew (?) is the release team leader.

>> While I have a great respect in Matthew's judgment and ability to explain what he is doing, I have found from experience that Keith's notions are more of a gamble.
>>   
> So far, I am quite pleased to say that everything I have put my hand to
> has worked really well.
> 
> But this comment indicates to me that you really dont "get it" yet.
> 
> The whole deal with this 3.11 project is not about delivering an image,
> its about addressing a need, through putting a philosophy into practice
> across the board. The 3.11 goal is to showcase the tools that make that
> philosophy possible. While the tools are not ready there is no 3.11
> (fortunately the tools are getting there and there will be a 3.11)

Many of us who have been around for a while know that we have tried 
numerous approaches over the years and we know that many of these have 
failed due to various reasons. For example, the idea of "harvesting" and 
having so called "harvesters" failed because it only led to a few people 
burning out (in the very early years it "worked" because we had paid 
people doing the harvesting).

So such a model is not viable IMHO. We need to move and try other routes 
- and I for one applaud the current effort in 3.11 and will try to chip 
in wherever I can.

> The need is definitely there, and the philosophy aiming to meet that
> need has been operating well for almost a year now. That's not a gamble
> at all, its already happening.
> 
> Edgar has delivered image after image, but does that help anyone in the
> long run really. It  doesn't help me. I have production code and I don't
> have time to spend a month moving it form one image to another manually,
> without any tools to help, broken MC, broken Universes etc. It doesnt
> help us move forward in the future to something like Morphic 3.0, or COG
> for which atomic loading is likely to be essential.
> 
> Real World Example:
> 
> As an example, Gjallar was working in 3.8, there is no technical
> compelling reason to move the huge code base over to 3.10. It doesn't
> offer any must have new features. The only reason for moving is to be
> able to keep up for the sake of it. So into this situation comes
> Installer, Gjallar migrates to use Installer for its build scripts
> (July2007). Once Installer is used, the build script can be run in 3.7,
> 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, Sophie, Croquet or Etoys. Installer proves the common
> ground that is essential to move forward, even though that move didn't
> take place for almost a year, the Gjallar team knew that they were no
> longer a fork, because they had the tools to make keeping up possible
> and straight forward.
> 
> So did Gjallar move to 3.10 because of the 3.10 image features, or
> because Installer and LevelPlayingField helped make it a smooth
> transition?  Gjallar is a fork no more. Which of 3.10/Installer is
> really contributing most to moving the community forward? I would say
> that Installer is doing a damn fine job for a little tool.

Yes, we made the move just recently of Gjallar over to 3.10 and adjusted 
our Installer script to use LPF etc. It worked really well and we did it 
mainly because we don't want to be left out on the improvements/fixes 
pouring in. All in all Installer is a great tool making "image building" 
quite easy. Combined with Sake/Packages (modulo having not used it yet) 
I presume it gets even more powerful.

A trivial example from Gjallar: We include fixes available on Mantix 
using Installer "oneliners". We don't need to wait for someone else to 
harvest it, get it into the image etc etc.

[SNIP]
> The important thing is that all of the contributions to that 3.11 are
> also available to all other image users. So you don't have to wait for a
> 3.11 image to partake of the new wine.
> 
> Its not really a gamble its a coherent strategy to implement what Goran
> had as a vision, multiple update streams, but in a different form.
> Different experts can contribute different tasks managed in Monticello.

Yes, we share the same understanding of where we are right now - the 
Squeak world is already "forked" in several directions. We need to get 
mechanisms in place to cope with that. I still hope to be able to move 
DeltaStreams forward (time, time, time...) but the important thing is 
that we are several who share the understanding of the core problem.

> Dont Panic

Hehe, I like it! :) Remember folks - we are all in this for fun! Matthew 
and Keith (and several others of course) have made huge contributions 
over the last year, and I am extremely grateful for that.

I hope to be able to pull my share mainly related to SM.

regards, Göran




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