Hi again!

Ok, read the thread and wanted to add a few things:

Dependencies
============
Adding dependency management to SM would not be hard. There have been one
successful attempt (though, don't ask me about the code) and there have
been several proposed models. My model may have been too "complex", but
eventually I came to the point where I said "Let's take ANY model".

Why it has not been done? Well, because only one person did it, and that
person didn't have time/energy/whatever to pull it all the way (not me).

I perhaps ended up trying to fix "too many things" in one go - so I got
stuck in "analysis/design paralysis". :)

Patches
=======
I personally would like to keep the "map" separate from the "format" and
the actual SCM/package tools. So SM handles many different formats, not
just MC. For patches I would like Deltas (as in DeltaStreams) to replace
ChangeSets.


There is one aspect of SM that I think people may miss:

Since SM can install .st-files .cs-files, mcz-files etc etc - there is
nothing really stopping us from adding new "kinds" of packages. For
example, I have toyed with the idea of adding a "Universe" package. The
package content itself would be a complete Universe map. Thus we could
have a group of co-maintainers of that Universe and they could make new
releases of it. The Universe itself would be simply a maintained "subset"
of SM packagereleases that work in a given environment - say a specific
image or whatever.

Distribution
============
The new model I have sketched on for SM is to go "distributed" like
apt-get etc. The concept of storing partial map information typically
using "dumb servers" and having the SM client code in the image "merge
them together". This would enable private SM catalogs, company wide SM
catalogs etc etc.

It would also enable "pushing" changes up to the map instead of going
through a centralized web UI. Thus much easier to make a Morphic UI (or
whatever) to *maintain* entries in SM.


Anyway, tons of ideas, tons of good things we can do. Just one thing
missing, and it is *always* the same thing:

 ** Noone actually steps up and offers to help in doing the work on SM to
make it happen!**

Except for Brian who did a really nice workover on the package loader UI,
and a few more things. :)

regards, Göran