On 02.08.2012, at 05:07, Levente Uzonyi wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Aug 2012, Frank Shearar wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> We've had a sharp uptick in the rate of development recently, and I
>> thought it worthwhile to talk about how this might go forward.
>> 
>> I'd originally wanted Environments in 4.4 because I like new features
>> in versions, rather than (and my perception might be completely wrong)
>> lots of bugfixes [1].
>> 
>> In talking to Colin, that was a tad optimistic, given that Chris
>> Cunnington and I were talking about a September release.
>> 
>> Since I'd like to increase the perceived momentum of Squeak, I'd thus
>> rather release 4.4 now than wait for us to hammer on Environments.
>> Colin reckons he'd like to adjust Environments over the next few
>> months. Given the invasiveness of the change (even if it has had very
>> little impact so far), that seems like a good plan. Solid release,
>> good. Flaky release, bad.
>> 
>> So, the plan right now is
>> * unwind Environments
>> * move 4.4 into beta
>> * get a green light on all tests (that we expect to work now)
>> (* ideally test a bunch of well-known packages against 4.4 on squeakci)
> 
> Would be nice. I tried Fuel recently, but Environments break it (it assumes that Smalltalk globals understands the SystemDictionary protocol) and there's also some Pharoism (no clean loading because of this) there which results in plenty of test failures and errors.
> 
>> * release 4.4 on September 1.
>> 
>> I don't know if that means we should simply fork 4.4 backdated
>> immediately prior to Environments landing or not: if that's possible,
> 
> I doubt it's a good idea, unless you want to maintain two branches (Trunk & 4.4 beta). The Trunk always goes forward, so if you want to "roll back" Environments there, then you'll have to unload the new packages (don't forget to bumb VersionNumber) and push new versions of existing ones which have the old behavior.
> 
>> that might be easier than unwinding. I would ask, though, that people
>> concentrate on hammering the 4.4 beta stream then, rather than
>> hammering on trunk, until September.
> 
> Keeping a single branch (Trunk) is better, because everyone will concentrate on that one. Maintaining two branches is a lot of effort IMHO.
> 
>> 
>> frank
>> 
>> [1] At some point I'll do the hard graft of formalising these
>> features/fixes into a changelog.
> 
> Sounds great.
> 
> 
> Levente
> 
>> 
>> 

Hear hear.

- Bert -