On 16.12.2009, at 11:58, Andreas Raab wrote:
> 
> Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> On 16.12.2009, at 09:23, Andreas Raab wrote:
>>> Question for the Unix folks: If we know that what you get via package install is most likely very old, would it make sense to check inside Squeak whether a new version is available? I.e., just a simple
>>> 
>>> (HTTPSocket httpGet: 'http://www.squeak.org/current_version') = SystemVersion current ifFalse:[self inform: 'A new version of Squeak has become available. Would you like to install it now?'].
>>> 
>>> might help get people more accustomed with later developments. Would that be a sensible thing to do?
>> It would be highly unusual in Linux, where version management and updates are provided by the system rather than by individual packages.
> 
> Never mind then ;-)
> 
>> Also, we'd have to state to how to actually get the new version. Which there are a ton of possibilities for, depending on how you got Squeak in the first place.
> 
> Fire up a web browser pointing at http://www.squeak.org/download/linux#distro
> 
> Cheers,
>  - Andreas

And then what? 

Linux has advanced beyond "./configure; make; make install". Downloading a tarball feels antiquated. Regular users don't do that anymore unless they absolutely have to. Package maintainers do and bundle this in a package for their distro.

Even downloading a DEB or RPM from random web sites doesn't make it much better, because this interferes with distro packages, again bypassing the official update mechanism.

IMHO the debs and rpms on squeak.org should be removed, and maintenance moved to the respective distros. Empower and support the maintainers, like Debian's José Redrejo or Fedora's Gavin Romig-Koch or Mandriva's Aleksey Lim.

- Bert -