[squeak-dev] Re: 3.11 and the trunk

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Wed Aug 19 16:04:20 UTC 2009


Göran Krampe wrote:
> - I must say I am surprised to hear that the board, including you 
> Andreas, have totally "missed" that 3.11 was about tools & process and 
> not about an artifact. I mean, it must have been said about 137 times! 
> One can argue about if it was a smart move to designate a release to the 
> task of finding a process and getting tools in shape - but I find it odd 
> that this comes as a revelation this late in the game.

I can't speak for the board, only for myself. From my perspective this 
is an issue of mislabeling. When I see something called "3.11" I expect 
this to be about Squeak 3.11, the software, not a set of tools. I'm also 
a little at a loss why then, if this is all about tools, so many noises 
are made about the 3.11 release artifact. If the entire goal of the 
process is to be able to load these tools into arbitrary versions, then 
why don't we just load them into the trunk and get over it? There is 
clearly still a level of disconnect somewhere but I'm hoping it's not 
quite as drastic as the last one.

> - Keith has more or less said that the trunk effort is counter 
> productive in comparison to his/their 3.11 effort. Personally I might 
> think it is a gray area, but even so - perhaps once and for all - with a 
> pedagogic mindset - explaining to us all how this is so and also 
> describing "trunk" and "bob" in some way that all of us can grok it... 
> would let us come to some conclusion.

It's quite simple really. Software development works by developers 
working together in a shared repository, right? That's the trunk. The 
trunk is nothing but a shared repository that the developers have commit 
rights to. In the course of software development, builds happen on a 
regular basis. That's Bob. Bob is a tool to assemble various bits of 
code and content and compile this into a result. Simple as that.

Mantis role in this process with regards to code is to assemble 
contributions from non-core-developers in the project; people who are 
not given direct commit rights to the repository. These contributions 
need to be reviewed and integrated. That's Installer for you. The result 
of the integration process goes back into the repository. There's the 
trunk again. All the parts have their place in the process.

> At this point I don't really give a rats about the above! :) I just want 
> us to heal, embrace, drink beer and find a way to move on. This "war" 
> has hurt us I think, I always brag about Squeak/Smalltalk being a very 
> friendly place, but it has slipped a bit lately. And thinking that it 
> might have been my posts setting off the fire doesn't really make it 
> feel better ;)

I'm not unhappy about it. We need to get moving again. Whatever triggers 
this process is a good thing. And I never expected the process to be 
painfree, but I do think we are making progress if only by illustrating 
that other models of contributions can actually be successful. Now we 
have to work out how to make this work together to produce an actual 
piece of software called Squeak.

> BTW, can we please get our current status/process "trunk" or "bob" or 
> whatever we are using these days written down on squeak.org in an 
> official manner? Perhaps this is already done.

I have nothing on Bob but I think the most relevant links are these:

http://installer.pbworks.com/Squeak311Proposal
http://board.squeak.org/2009/07/02/a-new-community-development-model/

> This also goes for the 3.11 team - does it even exist anymore?  
> Let us get our act together.

I leave it to Matthew to respond to this question.

Cheers,
   - Andreas



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