[Squeakfoundation]Incorporating removals & KCP stuff

[Doug Way]

(moving this to the SqF list since we're doing the final coordination now...)

Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
> 
> Ok, I've gone through the KCP stuff. I know we orginally decided to do
> the removals first, but I had an urge, and this doesn't touch so many
> different classes that I'm very worried about clashes. Anyway, it seems
> as the designated reviewer for this specific project I got back from my
> vacation before the removals were done, and I don't see much reason not
> to merge these now, but I don't mind checking the conflicts if this
> proposal isn't accepted.

Okay, we need to get moving on the KCP stuff and the removals now, so we can
move on with the 3.6 plan (including the various enhancements we've been
discussing).

Here's what I would suggest:  We incorporate the 10 removals first, all in one
batch as Goran and I suggested.  This would be very soon, let's say tomorrow. 
Then, Daniel can check for conflicts between the approved KCP items and the
removals.  My understanding is that there should be few conflicts.

Then, the adjusted KCP changes can be incorporated (after having at least the
preambles posted to the list as a sort of final review).  If changes need to
be made in a few of the removed packages to account for the KCP changes,
perhaps Daniel could inform the package owners of the required changes.


Anyway, I think doing all the removals in one batch is the way to go.  There
will be two types of problems we'll have to deal with:

1. Problems/bugs caused by the removals.  These should be relatively minor and
easy to fix, I'd think.

2. Problems/bugs/conflicts when re-loading any or all of the 10 packages. 
These problems will probably be more significant, but these problems need to
be pushed back to the package owners at some point anyway.  We're moving to a
model where package owners need to maintain their packages against base image
(prerequisite) changes, so we might as well start this now.  It may well be
that some packages (such as PWS) are not actively maintained and become
obsolete because no one really uses them.  If that happens, either a more
active package maintainer will have to step up, or the package could be
removed from "Squeak Official" status, which would remove it from the public
release.


Before thinking about incorporating the 10 removals, I decided to do some
testing.  To remove the 10 packages, I gave Goran's removal script a try. 
That appears to work.

Then I decided to try re-adding the 10 packages one by one into an image to
get back to the "Full" release.  I did it in this order, with the following
results:

1. SUnit - Yes.
2. BaseImage Tests - Yes.
3. Celeste Installation - Yes.
4. Games (and GamesTests) - Yes.
5. VMMaker - No.  Not auto-installable, but trying to download it results in a
"MNU: download", even after setting the download directory.
6. MacroBenchmarks - No.  Couldn't find a MacroBenchmarks package on SM!
7. PWS Installation - Yes.
8. Scamper - Yes.
9. Speech - No.  Installation results in a "MNU: arpabet".
10. Balloon3D - Yes.

So, we need to at least fix the loading problems with the three packages
before incorporating the removals.

Beyond that, ideally we'd also like to have Test packages for all 10 of these
packages as well, which pass... right now only a few packages have them.  I
don't think we should hold up incorporating the removals for this, though. 
But we should probably try to have them available before we move to 3.6beta,
at least.  Marcus and I can work on bugging the package owners to create these
Test packages.  All future package removal/additions will have to have a
corresponding Test package ahead of time so we don't get in this situation
again.

We still need to resolve the issue of how I should load the removal script
without SqueakMap, SAR, etc., because those won't be there in the vanilla
3.6alpha image.  Probably SAR is the only really important one... I don't know
if any require DVS.  I guess I'll just have to poke around with the removal
scripts and make them into a series of regular file-ins.  (An alternative
might be to include SAR in the base image for now.  SAR should probably be
part of the Full and Basic releases anyway.  Yes, we would end up splitting
off SAR again sometime later as we whittled down to the Minimal image, but so
what?  Same probably goes for SqueakMap.)

- Doug Way