That's many rants, I don't think I can answer to all of them.
An up to date image is built automatically:

http://build.squeak.org/job/SqueakTrunk

If you browse the site, you might also get an unofficial VM automatically built.

Updating a modified image has no guaranty to work when one modifies
the system too deeply...
And just loading the latest MC version has very few chances to work,
some intermediate stages are mandatory.
In the most complex cases, one must merge the modifications of the
older image from an up-to-date image.

Last thing, I think that the dirty Exceptions package is not really dirty.
Most probably it's due to an incorrect load order in a mcm.

Nicolas

2013/3/24 tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org>:
>
> On 24-03-2013, at 11:04 AM, Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Most probably you moved AbstractFont to another package.
>> Could you verify how it is classified? I have :
>>
>> Object subclass: #AbstractFont
>>       instanceVariableNames: ''
>>       classVariableNames: 'ForceNonSubPixelCount'
>>       poolDictionaries: ''
>> --->  category: 'Graphics-Fonts'
>
> Not me; it must be an artefact of the image I was using, which it turns out to my surprise is a 4.3 version.
>
> I've been trying to get a 4.4-12337 and update packages but so far it mostly seems to blow up. Some issue with SketchMorph and #rotationCenter: is one problem and trying to load the latest compiler package just trashes the vm  (the Cog vm, so far as I can tell from the dump file 'CogVM VM 6.0-pre - 21.0')
>
> I've attempted to find a newer image than the 4.4 but nothing seems to exist. While looking for a newer Mac Cog vm  http://www.squeakvm.org/mac/ points to a 404.  http://www.mirandabanda.org/files/Cog/VM/VM.r2701/cog.app.tgz appears to be about right though it disconcertingly claims to be Croquet instead of Squeak - no idea if that has any real meaning.
>
> OK, so next I try using the latest 'update' entry in the trunk repository. Loading that
> a) complains about loading 'Exceptions' on top of a package that has unsaved changes in the image. That doesn't sound good. Why does a released image have uncommitted code changes?
> b) MNU for #undeclared in SystemDictionary while loading system-fbs.519 Also not good sounding. It appears that the only implementor of #undeclared is Environment, but the environment iVar in Class>declare is still the SystemDictionary. Boom. It may be of interest that the still extant 'Undeclared' dictionary contains #EnvironmentRequest (nil), #category (#'public access'), #class (Compiler), #context (nil) and #requestor (nil).
>
> I'm not where to go from here. It seems a bit alarming that it is so problematic to update an image before I can even try to submit the changes I'm actually interested in.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Concurrent: an object that looks like a raisin but isn't
>
>
>