[squeak-dev] Re: worst crash yet trying to load stuff from Packages Universe in 3.10.2....

Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. woods at planix.ca
Tue Dec 16 20:59:56 UTC 2008


Thanks for your comments Jerome!  Your insight is quite useful!

I want to add one comment in reply to one of the things you mention....

On 15-Dec-2008, at 9:36 PM, Jerome Peace wrote:
>> To quote from <URL:http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5918>:
>>
>> 	"The Stable 3.10 universe is a package universe for Squeak 3.10,  
>> akin
>> to the ones done for 3.7 and 3.9. It includes 214 optional packages
>> that have all been verified to at least load into Squeak 3.10."
>>
> In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they are  
> different.
>
> Um, the problem you are describing is there. I would wonder how much  
> is due to laxer quality controls vs. the exponential explosion of  
> combinations that need to be tested. There are a lot more options  
> now than eight to ten years ago.

I wouldn't expect every combination to be tested.

However there is one fool-proof and extremely obvious test that should  
always be done in this kind of situation, but which clearly was never  
ever done:  LOAD EVERYTHING!

It is, and I think it _should_ be, my expectation that _everything_ in  
the default Package Universe for an official release should load  
together cleanly without even a hint of problems or conflicts.

Furthermore _everything_ should be tested minimally in this full-load  
image.  If there are unit tests that can be run then they should _all_  
run green.  There's no excuse whatsoever for not doing this minimal  
amount of testing.  This kind of QA testing could even be done  
headless and totally automated.  Obviously finding the cause of  
breakage and eliminating it from the PU is much more difficult, though  
with the right tools even that can be done automatically.  There are  
tons of examples in other system domains of doing this kind of  
automated basic QA testing:  Mozilla Tinderbox, NetBSD nightly builds,  
pkgsrc bulk builds, and so on.  Why it's not done for Package  
Universes for Squeak, especially official release PUs, I cannot even  
begin to imagine.

This lack of basic QA in other Squeak-related images isn't limited to  
the official Squeak+PU either of course.  I've noted that in the most  
recent Pharo image there are things that are _trivial_ to test but  
which throw up debugger windows instantly when I try them in a fresh  
image.  I.e. some things obviously were not even looked at, never mind  
tested in any proper way.  For example the basic Alice demo blows  
chunks.

There are even problems it seems in the latest VisualWorks (7.6) that  
I've tried too, though nothing quite so drastic as the problems I've  
had with even the most minimal stuff from the 3.10 PU.


> People have tried to deal with it by striping away pieces and trying  
> for a slimmer basic image in hopes that the quality of that would  
> improve.

I don't think that's a valid approach in any way, shape, or form.

Sure, the basic image might be clean and stable, but it's useless.   
There's no fun stuff for beginners and kids, and there's no useful  
stuff for developers.

I would try one of the "dev" images, but they include stuff I'm sure I  
_don't_ want.  Sigh.

-- 
					Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc.
					<woods at planix.ca>

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