[Squeakfoundation]A bit about SM1.1 and dependencies

[Daniel Vainsencher]

Hi Goran, everyone.

Since you mentioned it...

I know you have a paying job, which takes understandable precedence, and
delays the SM1.1 release. I would ask that you please consider doing a
work-split, that is, reprioritize the features, decide which ones have
to be in then next release, formally delay the others, such that the
next release is a as soon as possible.

Obviously, what I'm really getting at, is that we really need very
little to be able to build functional depedencies mechanisms. An SM
release that does nothing else but that would be VERY valuable to the
Squeak community. Just to remind those of us that aren't thinking about
this all the time why:

1. It would enable publishers of complex packages to split them, making
the package more modular, and yet keep the ease of installation single
packages enjoy.
2. It would enable a process to begin where people make up their
favorite configurations, and share them. This would be a big step
towards making distribution of images easier to democratize, and less a
bottleneck.

AFAICT, the only additional mechanism required to support dependencies
is package/card versioning. Links and resources would be nice to have,
but they aren't stopping us from implementing dependencies.

I know any changes in a release plan requires shifting some things
around, but I think in this case it is quite worthwhile...

I understand that your time is still limited, I'd just like to "get"
dependencies as soon as possible. It might help if we have some sort of
initial release and can help test/debug. In this view, the incremental
addition of prototypical services to SM 1.0 might be easier to handle
than work on a non-production SM1.1.
 
Daniel Vainsencher