[Vm-dev] Fwd: [Pharo-project] Squeaksource.com (was: [squeak-dev] Re: Addition to "About Pharo" dialog)

[David T. Lewis]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 07:19:43AM +0200, Alexander Lazarevi?? wrote:
>  
> When it looked like most of global open source Smalltalk development came to
> a halt last weekend because of squeaksource.com being down for about two
> days, I asked about moving vital parts like vmmaker to source.squeak.org .
> This would take some load from squeaksource.com (even if it is until there
> is a better alternative) and could make commits to vmmaker faster.
> As suggested I move the discussion to vm-dev.
> 
> Alex
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
> Date: 2011/8/27
> Subject: [Pharo-project] Squeaksource.com (was: [squeak-dev] Re: Addition to
> "About Pharo" dialog)
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list <
> squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> Cc: Pharo-project at lists.gforge.inria.fr
> 
> 
> On 26.08.2011, at 18:14, Alexander Lazarevi?? wrote:
> 
> Wouldn't it make also good sense to move some vital stuff like the vmmaker
> repo to this destination? I know this will be controversial, but the current
> situation is bad at best.
> 
> 
> That would be a good idea IMHO - you might ask what the other VM developers
> think of the idea on the vm-dev list.

+1

I would support moving VMMaker from squeaksource.com to source.squeak.org.
If we do so, I think we should have explicit agreement from the core VM
maintainers - Ian, Andreas and Esteban - as well as from Eliot and Igor,
who are most actively involved in new development. Approval of the Squeak
board would also be in order.

I do not think that source.squeak.org should become a general purpose
repository, but VMMaker represents an essential part of Squeak
(including Pharo, Cuis and others) that should be maintained such
that it can be used by anyone as if it were a standard part of
the image. For that reason, maintaining the VMMaker package on
source.squeak.org makes sense to me in the long term, and of
course it addresses some short terms issues with squeaksource also.

We have to recognize that in the last couple of years there has
been a huge increase in activity in the VMMaker project, and there
is some risk of this getting out of hand in the future as various
projects evolve and diverge from Squeak itself. But from my point
of view we have been quite successful at managing this so far
(albeit in a rather ad-hoc way), and I believe that there is
enough good will and competence in the Squeak/Pharo community
to deal with issues and possible conflicting goals in the future.
So as long as the key maintainers and developers are comfortable
with this, I see no problem with hosting VMMaker on source.squeak.org.

To be clear, I do *not* think that we should move VMMaker
solely because of reliability problems on squeaksource. That
is a problem that needs to be solved in some other way, and
moving key packages off squeaksource does not contribute to
a solution. However, I do think that moving VMMaker to
source.squeak.org is a good thing to do in its own right, and
I support it on that basis.

Dave