I don't have a strong opinion about inclusion of regexp into a
standard image but unless it's really big, would inability to unload
it be much of an issue?  I suppose if something gets "used" then, by
definition, it provided a combination of utility and accessibility was
good enough for someone to give it a purpose, is that bad?  It also
sounds like it can offer a sense of something "familiar" to new users,
which would be informative for them in terms of learning about
Squeak..

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 3:40 PM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> The problem with having stuff in the image by default is that it gets used
> ;)
> Once it is used all over the place you cannot unload it anymore.
> We have no good way of preventing such "misuse". If we take it into the
> image, we would basically have to say that it is now a core feature. Which
> may or may not be a good idea.
> - Bert -
> On 04.05.2010, at 12:56, Casey Ransberger wrote:
>
> +1
> Having a regexp engine in a known good state that jives with your release
> build is going to be key to grabbing mindshare from the likes of Ruby IMHO.
> When I was first looking at Squeak, one of my first questions was "how do I
> do regular expressions?" When the answer turned out to be "Go find a version
> of this package that works with this release and figure out how to install
> it" I nearly wrote Squeak off and went on to download a Haskell compiler
> instead.
> While I'd expect a regexp engine to be unloadable via
> #unloadAllKnownPackages, (hence not present in a "core" image,) I would even
> go so far as to say that we should probably be shipping it (and testing it)
> with the "standard" image.
> </2cents>
> On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 6:46 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
> wrote:
>>
>> On 04.05.2010, at 03:58, Hannes Hirzel wrote:
>> > Yes, that's an idea. However if I have the code snippet easily
>> > available in the 'Extending the System' workspace, then that's fine
>> > for me the time being.
>> >
>> > In fact I consider the Regex package to be a bit weak in terms of
>> > functionality but I think we do not have anything more comprehensive.
>> >
>> > It is easy for me to install a new image, run the updates and then
>> > execute a few more statements to configure the image for a particular
>> > purpose.
>> >
>> > --Hannes
>> >
>> > On 5/3/10, Ian Trudel <ian.trudel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Why isn't Regex included in the core image? It's a question I have in
>> >> my mind for a while. Dealing with text in Smalltalk often results in a
>> >> lot of code to write. Regular expressions are useful. Many programming
>> >> languages nowadays have a Regexp engine included.
>> >>
>> >> Ian.
>> >> --
>> >> http://mecenia.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>> Seems to be a perfect example of a package that could be bundled with a
>> release but not be loaded by default?
>>
>> - Bert -
>>
>>
>>
>>
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