Forks (Re: [Vm-dev] a Cog branch)

[Casey Ransberger]

This is something I've wanted to say about Squeak for a while now...

Every running image with changes in it is in effect a branch of Squeak. People seem to be asking for distributed SCM solutions (in which every working copy is in effect a branch) for the VM.  

Squeak is a self sustaining system: I think one reason to have a self sustaining system is to be able to fork it on whimsy. This will be especially useful for students and folks with crazy ideas that might just work. I think it will also be quite useful for businesses, which is a big part of why I was so enthusiastic about closing the deal on the MIT license.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I think we shouldn't worry at all about forks, and that statement includes not worrying at all about being compatible with forks. If I wanted to fork Squeak (and I do from time to time,) quite frankly, I think it would be unreasonable to expect Squeak to be compatible with my fork; when you fork, you're on your own. Anyone who's ever maintained a fork of something knows this from personal experience.

Now back to SCM. There are some nice wins with Git over Subversion, mostly to do with fast merges and distributed development. In fact I'd like it if we learned some things from Git in our further development of Monticello.

But for the love of God, can we keep Cog in the same repository that we keep the rest of the Squeak VMs? Maybe we switch to Git or Mercurial for managing C sources eventually, but we should do it across the board. Squeak is (from the moment they decided to actually use the Blue Book sources as a starting point) a *reference implementation.* You really don't want more than one of those.

I'm going to pull a total Jack-move and call Godwin's Law on myself in a shameless attempt to kill this subject as quickly as possible: Hitler. 

On Jun 25, 2010, at 12:53 AM, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:

> On 6/24/2010 7:16 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
>> One user could create a project, then others may create forks or
>> subforks of his project(s)
> 
> How exactly is this a good thing? I don't want 200 forked Squeak VM versions; I want one canonical source that people can build from.
> 
> Cheers,
>  - Andreas