On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 17:35 +0530, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
> On Thursday 22 May 2008 4:13:40 pm Norbert Hartl wrote:
> > I have stages
> >
> > - squeak (the downloaded unmodified source)
> > - bootstrap (patches like Delay, Semaphores, etc)
> > - base (core packages)
> > - app (deployable unit)
> >
> > Every stage is invoked with a startup script that patches the image
> > and saves it to the next stage. That is exactly what a debian
> > maintainer will do. Collecting some patch scripts (Smalltalk can
> > patch itself :) ) and combine them with original source to a debian
> > package.
> Tracking dependencies and conflicts across patches, packages and VM is one of 
> the strengths of Debian and a weakness in Squeak.

Can you elaborate on the "..across patches, ..." part? I do not know
what you mean by that. Talking about dependencies it'd be better to
compare debian archive format with Universe. Extending Universe with
two or three features would make it as valuable as dpkg for debian
users.

Even if squeak could cope well with all sorts of dependency and 
conflicts management it wouldn't change much. Debian is an operating
system and they are looking for an operating-system-way to do all
these things. 

Norbert