[squeak-dev] Smalltalk images considered harmful

Igor Stasenko siguctua at gmail.com
Thu May 22 07:45:35 UTC 2008


2008/5/22 K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk at gmail.com>:
> On Thursday 22 May 2008 4:28:29 am Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>> Our sources are the .image files. It isn't what people are used to, but
>> that doesn't make it less true.
> From the tone of the email, it looks as if Debian maintainer is just trying to
> understand images and figure out how to handle images in their current
> version control process.

Well, from that point, i think we should make it clear , that version
control of squeak images are totally on under squeak community control
(release team(s), to be precise). If they find this inappropriate,
then we have no other choice but not include images in distro and let
users download them by own.

> Text-based tools like texteditor, cmp, diff, patch
> etc.used in version control will not work with images. A Squeak image is not
> a 'source' but records the entire state of a virtual machine. In a way, it is
> like firmware to configure wireless devices or codecs required to interpret
> certain audio/video files. VM mimics a virtual device and image is
> its 'firmware'.
>
> The issues are:
>
> 1. How does one compare two images A and B are equal?
> 2. If A and B are not equal, how to extract the patch which produced B from A?
> 3. How does one compare two patch set to see if they are equal?
> 4. Given an image A and a series of patches P1..PN, can different people apply
> them in a sequence to produce the 'same' image, B.
> 5. Is an image file specific to an architecture or not (answer: not)
>
> I remember 1) was discussed in this mailing list sometime back but don't
> recollect a solution emerging from the discussions.
>
> Subbu
>
>



-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.



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