On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:55:46AM -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
> David T. Lewis wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 04:49:33PM -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
> > > [my old Linux system]
> > 
> > To check my understanding, you are using the 4.0.3-2202 because you
> > are stuck on an older Linux version, and the newer VMs do not run on
> > that older platform due to runtime library differences on the older
> > Linux system that you use versus the newer Linux system on which the
> > VM was compiled. Is that right?
> 
> I have not yet tested newer VMs, but there is a good chance that they
> will work even on Fedora 10. What I was trying to say is that there are
> many different situations out there and we should not attempt to support
> most of them, like mine. About people being "smart enough", we have to
> pick some situations where they aren't and make it "just work" for them
> and, unfortunately, let the rest take care of themselves.

Thanks, I understand and fully agree!

> In another email you suggested a role of an official Squeak ambassador
> for dealing with the various package mantainers in the Linux
> distributions, right? I think that is a good idea - most such mantainers
> take care of many packages other than Squeak and don't have time to pay
> too much attention to what we do nor do they know very much about it. If
> someone had the emails of all these people and could keep them updated
> and answer their questions it would help a lot.

I do not know much about the people actually doing the work of package
maintenance (and I would say that Bert has the most expertise and experience
here), but I would think that maintaining a VM package for any given
Linux distribution would be a big enough job for one person. It requires
a lot of knowledge, as well as a willingness to look after the issues over
a period of years. I think that Bert has acted as our unofficial ambassador
for a long time, but keeping track of the various distros is far more
than one person could ever do, and somebody has to do the real work of
package maintenance for each of the distros.

Dave