[squeak-dev] Packaging of 4.1?

Michael van der Gulik mikevdg at gmail.com
Fri Mar 19 20:35:59 UTC 2010


Hi all.

How should the next version of Squeak be packaged?

I currently use Linux, mostly from the command line. To install
Squeak, I need to go through a fairly involved (but for me, mostly
automatic) process:
1. Make a new directory.
2. Download the zip file containing image and changes files.
3. Unzip and RENAME them to squeak.image, squeak.changes, in the new directory.
4. Find the relevant sources file (now there are several of them!) and
copy / symlink it to that dir.
5. Find the right VM I want (I have several, some self-compiled) and
copy / symlink to that dir with the plugins I want.

I would not expect new users to do all this.

How do you install and run Squeak?

How can we make it easier for new users?

I believe that most people use a standard desktop environment these
days: Mac, Windows, Gnome, KDE or LXDE. The common features I see that
would be useful are:
* File associations / MIME types that start applications.
* In a file browser, a "Create new" menu that uses templates.

What would be nice is that a Squeak installer creates a file
association for an image file so that the users can just double-click
it, and that the file browser's "Create new" menu contains an option
to make a new Squeak image.

Web browsers often complain on start-up if they aren't properly
associated with HTML files. Can we do this in Squeak?

Is the ".image" extension the best one to use? Is another file
extension, such as ".cryodessication" perhaps better?

Gulik.

-- 
http://gulik.pbwiki.com/



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list