> The biggest issue with Metacello I'm seeing so far is that it muddles the
> installation script with dependency management and metadata.

But that is the same with the .spec file from a RPM package. They have both
the metadata about the package (packager, date, release number, version, etc),
the install scripts (pre/post install/uninstall scripts for things to
configure in the host
system). I can't see the problem here.

Very
> troublesome because it means you can't even *look* at a Metacello
> configuration from Squeak 3.8 or ealier.

Why would you want to do that. 3.8 is dead, must be dead and should be kill.
Let the past behind. Let your childs live their lives and go on. You
can't oversee
them *your* entire life. Squeak can't remain trying to get backwards
compatibility
forever. That way squeak will never make the foundation changes that needs.
If only one person uses 3.8 (or any old version, 3.8 is just the
example) but 100
are waiting to get a new feature in trunk that is non-backwards compatible with
some random old version you're screwing 100 people by caring about 1.
And don't say that productions systems depends on those old versions.
If that were
the case we would still be using fortran or cobol for programing Excel
or OO.org Calc.
The systems can change, it only the people that don't want to change.


 Extremely disturbing considering
> that in order to do dependency analysis one must run untrusted code to
> obtain the dependencies (so forget about server-side dependency analysis).
> And unfortunate because it means that Metacello has hardwired assumptions
> about its interactions with the rest of the environment (Gofer, OB etc)

Yes, but that is the compromise. You choose your tools and build some new tool.
Maybe Installer isn't the right tool for building Metacello. Maybe
because Gofer didn't exist
Metacello didn't existe before.
Remember, new knowledge leads to even more new knowledge. Tools are multipliers
of the ideas and producers of new ideas not imagined before.

> making it implausible to replace its underpinnings with something much
> simpler like Installer. To be honest, Metacello has been somewhat of a
> disappointment so far.
>
> Cheers,
>  - andreas
>
>
>

Cheers,
Miguel Cobá
http://miguel.leugim.com.mx