Proposal for Squeak 3.8 release schedule

[Andreas Raab]

Hi All,

Apologies for the belated reply on the issue but things have been moving
quickly (and somewhat unexpectedly) on a variety of fronts so that I didn't
have the time to write an earlier message on the subject.

Marcus recently posed the question of whether those people who have an
interest in a stable release with m17n would be willing to step up for
making it happen. Unfortunately he didn't wait very long for an answer
before posting changes into the unstable stream which really don't go too
well together with a stable m17n release that should be in sync with
Squeakland as far as possible.

After some talking with Michael and Ned, we would nevertheless like to
propose that we (e.g., the Squeakland people) manage the release of the 3.8
release under precisely the initial assumptions of it basically being "the
m17n release" and not much more.

To this effect here is what we'd like to propose: "We" (that is Michael,
Ned, Yoshiki, me and whoever else wants to join) filter the appropriate
enhancements and fixes that have already been posted in the unstable stream
and repost them into the stable 3.8 stream. This will address most of the
issues that needed to be addressed for 3.8 and should take no longer than
two weeks (the goal would be to have the release out in six weeks at most).

This in turn would mean we go beta as of YYY after which only fixes (and no
further changes from unstable) will go in. For the fixes, we'd propose the
following mechanism: We will "address" every reported bug in Mantis, which
means *you* have to put the bugs there if you want them fixed. "Addressing"
the bugs means that we will look at the issues and possibly ask for help in
fixing them but we will NOT promise to fix any of bugs ourselves (again it
is *your* responsibility to help with fixing the issues). However if there
is a fix for a bug we *will* look at it and either accept, modify, or reject
it (or ask for improvements). In any case, by the end of the process every
bug that has been reported will have been looked at and some resolution will
have been found. And of course, help is more than welcome.

Given the number of open bugs at Mantis we expect to complete this phase
around mid november. After which we can immediately open 3.9 alpha and start
to put in the things that would remain in the unstable queue.

Please let us know what you think about this proposal. What we're trying to
achieve is a release that is in sync with Squeakland as much as possible
without introducing some more "experimental" changes at this point (e.g., we
really don't want to impose large changes to the Squeakland users at this
point).

Cheers,
- Andreas

[David T. Lewis]

Post by Andreas Raab
After some talking with Michael and Ned, we would nevertheless like to
propose that we (e.g., the Squeakland people) manage the release of the 3.8
release under precisely the initial assumptions of it basically being "the
m17n release" and not much more.

....

Post by Andreas Raab
Please let us know what you think about this proposal. What we're trying to
achieve is a release that is in sync with Squeakland as much as possible
without introducing some more "experimental" changes at this point (e.g., we
really don't want to impose large changes to the Squeakland users at this
point).

I'm not one of the people doing the work, so my vote doesn't count. But I
think that this is an excellent proposal. The m17n release is a big change,
and it would be great to have this done with a clean, limited release.

With a bit of care, it should also be possible to ensure that the unstable
stream contains all of the changes in the stable 3.8 stream, so hopefully
the work on the unstable stream can continue without interruption.

Thanks, and I hope that this proposal is accepted.

Dave

[Diego Gomez Deck]

Hi,

I would like to know which changes in unstable update stream will be
considered stable/unstable.

Cheers,

-- Diego

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi All,
Apologies for the belated reply on the issue but things have been moving
quickly (and somewhat unexpectedly) on a variety of fronts so that I didn't
have the time to write an earlier message on the subject.
Marcus recently posed the question of whether those people who have an
interest in a stable release with m17n would be willing to step up for
making it happen. Unfortunately he didn't wait very long for an answer
before posting changes into the unstable stream which really don't go too
well together with a stable m17n release that should be in sync with
Squeakland as far as possible.
After some talking with Michael and Ned, we would nevertheless like to
propose that we (e.g., the Squeakland people) manage the release of the 3.8
release under precisely the initial assumptions of it basically being "the
m17n release" and not much more.
To this effect here is what we'd like to propose: "We" (that is Michael,
Ned, Yoshiki, me and whoever else wants to join) filter the appropriate
enhancements and fixes that have already been posted in the unstable stream
and repost them into the stable 3.8 stream. This will address most of the
issues that needed to be addressed for 3.8 and should take no longer than
two weeks (the goal would be to have the release out in six weeks at most).
This in turn would mean we go beta as of YYY after which only fixes (and no
further changes from unstable) will go in. For the fixes, we'd propose the
following mechanism: We will "address" every reported bug in Mantis, which
means *you* have to put the bugs there if you want them fixed. "Addressing"
the bugs means that we will look at the issues and possibly ask for help in
fixing them but we will NOT promise to fix any of bugs ourselves (again it
is *your* responsibility to help with fixing the issues). However if there
is a fix for a bug we *will* look at it and either accept, modify, or reject
it (or ask for improvements). In any case, by the end of the process every
bug that has been reported will have been looked at and some resolution will
have been found. And of course, help is more than welcome.
Given the number of open bugs at Mantis we expect to complete this phase
around mid november. After which we can immediately open 3.9 alpha and start
to put in the things that would remain in the unstable queue.
Please let us know what you think about this proposal. What we're trying to
achieve is a release that is in sync with Squeakland as much as possible
without introducing some more "experimental" changes at this point (e.g., we
really don't want to impose large changes to the Squeakland users at this
point).
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Michael Rueger]

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Hi,
I would like to know which changes in unstable update stream will be
considered stable/unstable.

The rule of thumb is to include fixes but not extensions.

The "3.8 volunteers" ;-) are currently busy, but we will go through the
curent list of updates first thing next week and get the process going.

Michael

[Diego Gomez Deck]

Post by Michael Rueger

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
I would like to know which changes in unstable update stream will be
considered stable/unstable.

The rule of thumb is to include fixes but not extensions.

In this case I very much *disagree* with your proposal.

Let me state my point of view:

The community decided about an ultra-stable 3.8 release over ends of
July:
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-July/080375.html

Since then the plan about 3.8-ultra-stable was paused until yesterday
you told us your proposal.

Meanwhile the community moved in another directing in absence of answers
from you. Talking for myself I changed my plans about Small-Land's
release delaying it for weeks and I invested time and effort merging my
changes in unstable stream to join 3.8.

Note that more than 2 months had elapsed since the original idea of
ultraConservative-shortRelease for 3.8. That means we spent more time
waiting that the time we decided to invest on 3.8UltraStable (As it was
2 months).


BTW, Did you notice all the changes in 3.8 unstable are very stable and
all are configurable using preferences?.


-- Diego

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Diego,

Post by Diego Gomez Deck

Post by Michael Rueger

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
I would like to know which changes in unstable update stream will be
considered stable/unstable.

The rule of thumb is to include fixes but not extensions.

In this case I very much *disagree* with your proposal.

But why? Our main reason for wanting this release is so that we have one
which is largely in sync between Squeakland and Squeak.org. From the last
year we know how important such a sync-ed up release can be and all we're
trying to do is to make sure there is some Squeak.org version that matches
the Squeakland version. In return, we are offering to work on a full release
cycle. Clearly, this requires us to accept changes from the Squeak.org
release into Squeakland but equally clearly there are limits to the amount
of changes that we're willing to make in a production release.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
The community decided about an ultra-stable 3.8 release over ends of
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-July/080375.html
Since then the plan about 3.8-ultra-stable was paused until yesterday
you told us your proposal.

Has it been that long already? I apologize. With two upcoming releases, with
preparing various new projects and spending too much time on airports time
really flies by.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Meanwhile the community moved in another directing in absence of answers
from you. Talking for myself I changed my plans about Small-Land's
release delaying it for weeks and I invested time and effort merging my
changes in unstable stream to join 3.8.

Do I understand you correctly that you would like to see the 3.8 release to
be in sync with the Small-Land release? If so, would it matter if the
Small-Land release were sync-ed with the 3.9 release instead?

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Note that more than 2 months had elapsed since the original idea of
ultraConservative-shortRelease for 3.8. That means we spent more time
waiting that the time we decided to invest on 3.8UltraStable (As it was
2 months).
BTW, Did you notice all the changes in 3.8 unstable are very stable and
all are configurable using preferences?.

That may well be (I have to admit that I haven't tested the latest changes
too much) but I would argue against any larger scale changes even if they
could be proven to be entirely harmless. The Squeakland release is out there
already which -to me- means we only want to do minimal changes.

Cheers,
- Andreas

[stéphane ducasse]

Post by Andreas Raab
Has it been that long already? I apologize. With two upcoming
releases, with preparing various new projects and spending too much
time on airports time really flies by.

I understand but this is true that with marcus we really wanted to push
all the pending fixes because during nearly a month or more nothing
happened. And this is what diego pointed.

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Meanwhile the community moved in another directing in absence of answers
from you. Talking for myself I changed my plans about Small-Land's
release delaying it for weeks and I invested time and effort merging my
changes in unstable stream to join 3.8.

Do I understand you correctly that you would like to see the 3.8
release to be in sync with the Small-Land release? If so, would it
matter if the Small-Land release were sync-ed with the 3.9 release
instead?

I'm not diego but I think that we could (but for that we would need
help) release a fast 3.9 if diego needs it.

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Note that more than 2 months had elapsed since the original idea of
ultraConservative-shortRelease for 3.8. That means we spent more time
waiting that the time we decided to invest on 3.8UltraStable (As it was
2 months).

Andreas I hope that you will have more time in the future for every
(bodies) :)
Now I would like to take the opportunity to raise the following points:
- it would be nice that the main players in Squeak have more visible
schedules (even if they do not have to be mentioned
months in advanced, may change....)
- I think that a bit of communication would ***really*** help.
- We tried to do that with ESUG but partially failed.
- Sometimes I have the feeling that Squeaklanders, tweakers, plays a
bit alone (I understand because
this is certainly the best way for you to go fast) still it would be
nice to have some known points or targets

For example, since I saw the latest version of Tweak I stopped to think
at all about morphic and morphic improvements.
Now the questions is that Tweak does not exist because we do not know
"publicly" what it is what are the plans.
I understand well that having plans for tweak too early can be as bad
as none. Because during that time, people such as
diego needs a better Morphic and look. Still it would be nice to have a
vision at one year. And to see how /if transition is planned
get tweak instead of Morphic.

So I do not ask you to react on this particular aspects but think in
term of how to improve the communication
between all the partners. I think that this would have been the role of
squeak foundation but this stuff
never existed. So may be we should make it real.

Stef

[Marcus Denker]

Hi,

So how do we resolve this? It would be nice to have a solution that
would be good for everyone.

The only solution I see is to do two releases with one "customer" each:
a fast 3.8 for squeakland, and directly after
that a 3.9 in the timeframe that we defined for 3.9. 3.9 would be the
"smallland" sync release.

Would that be possible? would anybody be Ok with that?

For the future, I would like to see two things:

1) More communication between the foundet projects and between the
community and the projects
2) More involvement of the projects in the day-to-day Bug-fixing
process and release coodination of squeak.org Squeak.


Marcus

Post by stéphane ducasse

Post by Andreas Raab
Has it been that long already? I apologize. With two upcoming
releases, with preparing various new projects and spending too much
time on airports time really flies by.

I understand but this is true that with marcus we really wanted to
push all the pending fixes because during nearly a month or more
nothing happened. And this is what diego pointed.

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Meanwhile the community moved in another directing in absence of answers
from you. Talking for myself I changed my plans about Small-Land's
release delaying it for weeks and I invested time and effort merging my
changes in unstable stream to join 3.8.

Do I understand you correctly that you would like to see the 3.8
release to be in sync with the Small-Land release? If so, would it
matter if the Small-Land release were sync-ed with the 3.9 release
instead?

I'm not diego but I think that we could (but for that we would need
help) release a fast 3.9 if diego needs it.

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Note that more than 2 months had elapsed since the original idea of
ultraConservative-shortRelease for 3.8. That means we spent more time
waiting that the time we decided to invest on 3.8UltraStable (As it was
2 months).

Andreas I hope that you will have more time in the future for every
(bodies) :)
- it would be nice that the main players in Squeak have more visible
schedules (even if they do not have to be mentioned
months in advanced, may change....)
- I think that a bit of communication would ***really*** help.
- We tried to do that with ESUG but partially failed.
- Sometimes I have the feeling that Squeaklanders, tweakers, plays a
bit alone (I understand because
this is certainly the best way for you to go fast) still it would be
nice to have some known points or targets
For example, since I saw the latest version of Tweak I stopped to
think at all about morphic and morphic improvements.
Now the questions is that Tweak does not exist because we do not know
"publicly" what it is what are the plans.
I understand well that having plans for tweak too early can be as bad
as none. Because during that time, people such as
diego needs a better Morphic and look. Still it would be nice to have
a vision at one year. And to see how /if transition is planned
get tweak instead of Morphic.
So I do not ask you to react on this particular aspects but think in
term of how to improve the communication
between all the partners. I think that this would have been the role
of squeak foundation but this stuff
never existed. So may be we should make it real.
Stef

[stéphane ducasse]

Post by Marcus Denker
1) More communication between the foundet projects and between the
community and the projects
2) More involvement of the projects in the day-to-day Bug-fixing
process and release coodination of squeak.org Squeak.

Me too because I think that one person spending one hour every two or
three days to help would make a real impact.

We still need a Etoy guide. I will not harvest any fixes related to
Etoy anymore since I do not know if this is good or not, or breaking
something.

For 3.9 I would like to have the fix that dan did for getting the VM
interpreter working again. If someone is in contact with dan
please tell him this is important. (I sent him emails but got no
reaction).


Stef

[Marcus Denker]

Post by stéphane ducasse

Post by Marcus Denker
1) More communication between the foundet projects and between the
community and the projects
2) More involvement of the projects in the day-to-day Bug-fixing
process and release coodination of squeak.org Squeak.

Me too because I think that one person spending one hour every two or
three days to help would make a real impact.
We still need a Etoy guide. I will not harvest any fixes related to
Etoy anymore since I do not know if this is good or not, or breaking
something.

One thing we should really think about is how we manage the
developement of the base Squeak System in the future.
If you look at the structure now, we see that there are some Guides,
not doing that much actually, because they are (mostly)
just hobby-squeakers.

Strangely enough, nobody of those who rely on Squeak for fundet
projects or running companys are involved in any way.
Is that good or bad? The only thing I see is that the development and
planning of squeak.org Squeak is quite badly out
of sync with all major projects.

What about having the big projects be part of the Guides with one
developer/representative and make sure that these
guys talk to each other, and even: Meet face to face regularly, if
possible.

IMHO that would require a commintment of all those people to put a
certain amount of developer hours into
the booring stuff (Bug tracking/resolving, harvesting, discussing
schedules, setting them up and take care that
they are met). So projects would "pay" with developer hours for making
sure that the further development is in
sync with their project.

I think that something like that could bring some more professionalism
into the whole game.

Marcus

[Craig Latta]

Hi Marcus--

Post by Marcus Denker
If you look at the structure now, we see that there are some Guides,
not doing that much actually, because they are (mostly) just
hobby-squeakers.

Ha! I have to disagree with you there, on both counts. First, I'm doing
a lot of work making a minimal system. For over a year I've asked for
discussion and reported progress, and I've made some releases. While
there have been some significant individual exceptions (see, for
example, the Squat acknowledgements) the general response to all of
these things has been, er, minimal. :) From my point of view, it seems
like people are just sitting back waiting for a finished result. That's
still tenable; the part that concerns me is the lack of discussion about
desired features and integration timing. I guess the consensus is that
it's not worth discussing until there is a finished result (which may or
not do what people want :).

Second, I don't think it's at all clear that paid Squeakers contribute
more or less than unpaid ones (in any dimension: time, energy, code
quality, etc.), and the very question is pointless. Belittling either
group is unconstructive; please don't go there. :)


-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
***@netjam.org
www.netjam.org
[|] Proceed for Truth!

[stéphane ducasse]

Hi craig

I think that having Squat working on more recent version would help
people having a look at it.

Then what marcus wants to say is that been a cleaning woman is not fun
and that everybody can participate,
even if this is surely much more exciting to build be next 3D or
whatever system.

I'm sad to see a guy like marcus psending his time on cleaning and
making sure that changes do not get lost while
he could do much better and cool stuff to get a really cool compiler
framework. (Marcus started to work and soon
ByteSurgeon will be available and you will see what I mean)

Stef

Post by Craig Latta
Hi Marcus--

Post by Marcus Denker
If you look at the structure now, we see that there are some Guides,
not doing that much actually, because they are (mostly) just
hobby-squeakers.

Ha! I have to disagree with you there, on both counts. First, I'm doing
a lot of work making a minimal system. For over a year I've asked for
discussion and reported progress, and I've made some releases. While
there have been some significant individual exceptions (see, for
example, the Squat acknowledgements) the general response to all of
these things has been, er, minimal. :) From my point of view, it seems
like people are just sitting back waiting for a finished result. That's
still tenable; the part that concerns me is the lack of discussion about
desired features and integration timing. I guess the consensus is that
it's not worth discussing until there is a finished result (which may or
not do what people want :).
Second, I don't think it's at all clear that paid Squeakers contribute
more or less than unpaid ones (in any dimension: time, energy, code
quality, etc.), and the very question is pointless. Belittling either
group is unconstructive; please don't go there. :)
-C
--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
[|] Proceed for Truth!

[Craig Latta]

Hi Steph--

Post by stéphane ducasse
I think that having Squat working on more recent version would help
people having a look at it.

I do plan to release my Squeak-3-compatible versions of the tools
(remote browsing, module management, etc.). But in general, Squat is
about creating a minimal snapshot, and taking advantage of the
opportunities that presents. So "making it work in a more recent version
of Squeak" is, for the moment, largely contrary to the goals. Indeed, I
hope that Squat becomes the basis for future Squeak release snapshots,
in a clean break from previous snapshots (see
http://netjam.org/squat/releases/current/frame.php#answers ).

I'm trying to kill the bloat monster. :)


-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
***@netjam.org
www.netjam.org
[|] Proceed for Truth!

[Blake]

Post by Craig Latta
I'm trying to kill the bloat monster. :)

This seems like a worthy goal, though Smalltalk gets less-and-less bloated
(apparently) as the rest of the world catches up and surpasses it
bloat-wise.

You say there's been no response. Does nobody else see this as a good
thing or necessary thing? Or is it just not as exciting as, say, Croquet,
so it's tough to feel the community out?

[Craig Latta]

Post by Blake

Post by Craig Latta
I'm trying to kill the bloat monster. :)

This seems like a worthy goal, though Smalltalk gets less-and-less
bloated (apparently) as the rest of the world catches up and
surpasses it bloat-wise.

It's not just a matter of size, there are several other bad effects.
For example, bloat also makes system structure more complicated and
harder to understand. I think we could get things done faster if things
were simpler. Perhaps it's really a spaghetti monster. :) There are
also new useful things we could do, like imprinting (see the Squat
mailing list archives).

Post by Blake
You say there's been no response. Does nobody else see this as a
good thing or necessary thing? Or is it just not as exciting as,
say, Croquet, so it's tough to feel the community out?

People generally seem to think it's a worthwhile thing to do, but it's
always something "in the future" and therefore (somehow) planning for
using it can always be deferred. Or something. :)


-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
***@netjam.org
www.netjam.org
[|] Proceed for Truth!

[Blake]

Post by Craig Latta
It's not just a matter of size, there are several other bad effects.
For example, bloat also makes system structure more complicated and
harder to understand. I think we could get things done faster if things
were simpler. Perhaps it's really a spaghetti monster. :) There are
also new useful things we could do, like imprinting (see the Squat
mailing list archives).

This is true.

Post by Craig Latta
People generally seem to think it's a worthwhile thing to do, but it's
always something "in the future" and therefore (somehow) planning for
using it can always be deferred. Or something. :)

Kudos to you for doing it, then.

[lex at cc.gatech.edu ()]

Post by Blake
You say there's been no response. Does nobody else see this as a good
thing or necessary thing? Or is it just not as exciting as, say, Croquet,
so it's tough to feel the community out?

Personally, I would have use for it in a few projects, but haven't
worked on them yet. I'm quiet because I haven't really dived in yet,
but I plan to. A minimal Squeak image is a valuable thing.


Lex

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Marcus,

Post by Marcus Denker
So how do we resolve this? It would be nice to have a
solution that would be good for everyone.
The only solution I see is to do two releases with one
"customer" each: a fast 3.8 for squeakland, and directly
after that a 3.9 in the timeframe that we defined for 3.9.
3.9 would be the "smallland" sync release.
Would that be possible? would anybody be Ok with that?

I think from our point of view this would be a good solution.

Cheers,
- Andreas

[stéphane ducasse]

ok so this would mean

3.8 for 25 of November
beta 15 of october
3.9 for 15 of December
beta 15 of november

Do am I correct?

Andreas I discussed a lot with marcus and others and I think that the
communication should be improved.

Stef

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Marcus,

Post by Marcus Denker
So how do we resolve this? It would be nice to have a
solution that would be good for everyone.
The only solution I see is to do two releases with one
"customer" each: a fast 3.8 for squeakland, and directly
after that a 3.9 in the timeframe that we defined for 3.9.
3.9 would be the "smallland" sync release.
Would that be possible? would anybody be Ok with that?

I think from our point of view this would be a good solution.
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Diego Gomez Deck]

Who will work on 3.8 release and when?

And who will work on 3.9 release and when?

If we spent 2 months just waiting for answers, how is supposed we can
agree on any schedule?

We can just rearrange the everybody's schedules based on the demand of
one part of the community.

-- Diego

Post by stéphane ducasse
ok so this would mean
3.8 for 25 of November
beta 15 of october
3.9 for 15 of December
beta 15 of november
Do am I correct?
Andreas I discussed a lot with marcus and others and I think that the
communication should be improved.
Stef

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Marcus,

Post by Marcus Denker
So how do we resolve this? It would be nice to have a
solution that would be good for everyone.
The only solution I see is to do two releases with one
"customer" each: a fast 3.8 for squeakland, and directly
after that a 3.9 in the timeframe that we defined for 3.9.
3.9 would be the "smallland" sync release.
Would that be possible? would anybody be Ok with that?

I think from our point of view this would be a good solution.
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Diego,

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Who will work on 3.8 release and when?

Michael would be the head for integration with Yoshiki at the helm for any
more complex m17n issues (AFAIK, this just works out for all of us in
preparation of OOPSLA). Ned and I would probably do some "go and look over
bugs and fixes" stuff. And of course we'd hope for help from as many people
as possible but we're willing to deal organizationally with these issues if
we have to (e.g., like I said I don't consider it to be our problem to
actually *fix* anything - just to make sure that fixes get looked at and
aren't forgotten).

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
And who will work on 3.9 release and when?

That is a good question. If we time it right, then the work could partially
overlap. For example, the work on 3.9 might focus on anything that needs to
be fixed, changed, whatever to get in sync with the Small-Land release but
no more. Who exactly would work on this I cannot say since I can't say where
most of the work would actually be. For 3.8 (the m17n release) it's fairly
clear that we need to make sure where the issues (and solutions are). I have
no good grasp on the Small-Land integration for 3.9.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
If we spent 2 months just waiting for answers, how is supposed we can
agree on any schedule?

That's the ?1,000,000 question isn't it?! ;-) The only way to say for sure
is to actually agree and do things. And I realize that we screwed up here
over the last two months and we're eager to fix this.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
We can just rearrange the everybody's schedules based on the demand of
one part of the community.

I understand this. And get me right, my proposal wasn't a "demand" - it was
an attempt to see if we can still have the release that we're mostly
interested in, one that is in sync with Squeakland without major
modifications to Squeakland.

Cheers,
- Andreas

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Steph,

Post by stéphane ducasse
ok so this would mean
3.8 for 25 of November
beta 15 of october
3.9 for 15 of December
beta 15 of november
Do am I correct?

Yes, unforeseen interruptions non-withstanding.

Post by stéphane ducasse
Andreas I discussed a lot with marcus and others and I think that the
communication should be improved.

I certainly agree - if I only knew where and how. The trouble is that when
I'm on the road I'm typically in meetings back to back and only read Emails
once or twice per day (and won't spent the two hours it would take me to
respond to all the ones that I "should" respond to...) So it is sometimes
really hard for me to catch up with the amount of stuff that goes on here
(given that I've been "home" for maybe two weeks in the last two months
doesn't help either...) The best chance for us to talk about this would've
been at ESUG and there we actually did talk a little about it (not enough I
will admit) but that leaves those people out who aren't there (which can be
fairly annoying). I'm open for any proposals that may help improve the
situation - preferredly those that do not require my personal attention ;-)

Cheers,
- Andreas

[stéphane ducasse]

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by stéphane ducasse
Andreas I discussed a lot with marcus and others and I think that the
communication should be improved.

I certainly agree - if I only knew where and how. The trouble is that
when I'm on the road I'm typically in meetings back to back and only
read Emails once or twice per day (and won't spent the two hours it
would take me to respond to all the ones that I "should" respond
to...) So it is sometimes really hard for me to catch up with the
amount of stuff that goes on here (given that I've been "home" for
maybe two weeks in the last two months doesn't help either...) The
best chance for us to talk about this would've been at ESUG and there
we actually did talk a little about it (not enough I will admit) but
that leaves those people out who aren't there (which can be fairly
annoying). I'm open for any proposals that may help improve the
situation - preferredly those that do not require my personal
attention ;-)

I know and understand. I started to travel like a mad man too and this
is not good for internal energy :)
The first level of communication is that:

- We need a Tweak (a guy knowing what will happen to tweak ;)) to help
harvesting, pushing in the unstable stream
and preparing the migration that I hope, prey for....
- We need an Etoyer to make sure that we are not breaking stuff. (but
this is now months that we ask for that without success)
- then try to have some better plan (for example when are the etoys
release due,
how tweak, croquet, squeak interacts), What I see now is that Croquet
is built suing tweak on top of extended Squeak VM.
when can we get a Tweak for Squeak version in Squeak and kill Morphic
:)

all kind of other information that will help people to understand and
make plan on their own :)


From our part (the SCGers) we would like to be considered not anymore
as cleaners but as "Change Enabler" Tm.
This is why we will help the process but focus on essential changes
that will make possible to changes and create
a better squeak:
better compiler (using anthony excellent work)
byte-code edition (improving IRBuilder)
...
...

Stef

[Germán S. Arduino]

At risk of sound irreverent because I'm not a player in the squeak releases
I want to say I second Stef and Marcus in the sense that Squeaklanders
*must* have a better communication with the squeak-dev community.

I know very well how hard has been working Diego to be in time with
SmallLand Squeak and sound a bit unfear, after a long time without talk,
this change of plans.

Regards.

gsa.

Post by stéphane ducasse

Post by Andreas Raab
Has it been that long already? I apologize. With two upcoming releases,
with preparing various new projects and spending too much time on
airports time really flies by.

I understand but this is true that with marcus we really wanted to push
all the pending fixes because during nearly a month or more nothing
happened. And this is what diego pointed.

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Meanwhile the community moved in another directing in absence of answers
from you. Talking for myself I changed my plans about Small-Land's
release delaying it for weeks and I invested time and effort merging my
changes in unstable stream to join 3.8.

Do I understand you correctly that you would like to see the 3.8 release
to be in sync with the Small-Land release? If so, would it matter if the
Small-Land release were sync-ed with the 3.9 release instead?

I'm not diego but I think that we could (but for that we would need help)
release a fast 3.9 if diego needs it.

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Note that more than 2 months had elapsed since the original idea of
ultraConservative-shortRelease for 3.8. That means we spent more time
waiting that the time we decided to invest on 3.8UltraStable (As it was
2 months).

Andreas I hope that you will have more time in the future for every
(bodies) :)
- it would be nice that the main players in Squeak have more visible
schedules (even if they do not have to be mentioned
months in advanced, may change....)
- I think that a bit of communication would ***really*** help.
- We tried to do that with ESUG but partially failed.
- Sometimes I have the feeling that Squeaklanders, tweakers, plays a bit
alone (I understand because
this is certainly the best way for you to go fast) still it would be nice
to have some known points or targets
For example, since I saw the latest version of Tweak I stopped to think at
all about morphic and morphic improvements.
Now the questions is that Tweak does not exist because we do not know
"publicly" what it is what are the plans.
I understand well that having plans for tweak too early can be as bad as
none. Because during that time, people such as
diego needs a better Morphic and look. Still it would be nice to have a
vision at one year. And to see how /if transition is planned
get tweak instead of Morphic.
So I do not ask you to react on this particular aspects but think in term
of how to improve the communication
between all the partners. I think that this would have been the role of
squeak foundation but this stuff
never existed. So may be we should make it real.
Stef

[Marcus Denker]

Post by Germán S. Arduino
At risk of sound irreverent because I'm not a player in the squeak releases
I want to say I second Stef and Marcus in the sense that Squeaklanders
*must* have a better communication with the squeak-dev community.
I know very well how hard has been working Diego to be in time with
SmallLand Squeak and sound a bit unfear, after a long time without talk,
this change of plans.

Yes. And I think that if we garantee the 3.9 release process to be
exactly as defined,
it would, as much as Diego is concerned, not be a change.

So 3.8 would just be a quick release, not impacting 3.9 in any way (3.9
would have all
the fixes of 3.8, of course).

Would that be possible?

Marcus

[stéphane ducasse]

I think that diego is right and I would like that we find a way to
satisfy everybody.
If necessary it would be good that 3.8 builders, really help doing a
3.9 fast release for diego.

Stef

Post by Diego Gomez Deck

Post by Michael Rueger

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
I would like to know which changes in unstable update stream will be
considered stable/unstable.

The rule of thumb is to include fixes but not extensions.

In this case I very much *disagree* with your proposal.
The community decided about an ultra-stable 3.8 release over ends of
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-July/
080375.html
Since then the plan about 3.8-ultra-stable was paused until yesterday
you told us your proposal.
Meanwhile the community moved in another directing in absence of answers
from you. Talking for myself I changed my plans about Small-Land's
release delaying it for weeks and I invested time and effort merging my
changes in unstable stream to join 3.8.
Note that more than 2 months had elapsed since the original idea of
ultraConservative-shortRelease for 3.8. That means we spent more time
waiting that the time we decided to invest on 3.8UltraStable (As it was
2 months).
BTW, Did you notice all the changes in 3.8 unstable are very stable and
all are configurable using preferences?.
-- Diego

[goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()]

Hi all!

As being mostly "offline" at least the rest of October my "vote" doesn't
count for much either - but I think it sounds great. :)

I am not totally sure how/when the next version of SM is due, but given
the possibility of my work on it "clashing" with release schedules - the
next version of SM will be a "stuff added but not much modified"
release. :)

regards, Göran

[stéphane ducasse]

perfect! go ahead.

Post by Andreas Raab
Please let us know what you think about this proposal. What we're
trying to achieve is a release that is in sync with Squeakland as much
as possible without introducing some more "experimental" changes at
this point (e.g., we really don't want to impose large changes to the
Squeakland users at this point).

What is experimental in 3.8 unstable? Diego's look? Because else I'm
curious to know what are the changes that impacts squeakland end-users.

Stef

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi All,
Apologies for the belated reply on the issue but things have been
moving quickly (and somewhat unexpectedly) on a variety of fronts so
that I didn't have the time to write an earlier message on the
subject.
Marcus recently posed the question of whether those people who have an
interest in a stable release with m17n would be willing to step up for
making it happen. Unfortunately he didn't wait very long for an answer
before posting changes into the unstable stream which really don't go
too well together with a stable m17n release that should be in sync
with Squeakland as far as possible.
After some talking with Michael and Ned, we would nevertheless like to
propose that we (e.g., the Squeakland people) manage the release of
the 3.8 release under precisely the initial assumptions of it
basically being "the m17n release" and not much more.
To this effect here is what we'd like to propose: "We" (that is
Michael, Ned, Yoshiki, me and whoever else wants to join) filter the
appropriate enhancements and fixes that have already been posted in
the unstable stream and repost them into the stable 3.8 stream. This
will address most of the issues that needed to be addressed for 3.8
and should take no longer than two weeks (the goal would be to have
the release out in six weeks at most).
This in turn would mean we go beta as of YYY after which only fixes
(and no further changes from unstable) will go in. For the fixes, we'd
propose the following mechanism: We will "address" every reported bug
in Mantis, which means *you* have to put the bugs there if you want
them fixed. "Addressing" the bugs means that we will look at the
issues and possibly ask for help in fixing them but we will NOT
promise to fix any of bugs ourselves (again it is *your*
responsibility to help with fixing the issues). However if there is a
fix for a bug we *will* look at it and either accept, modify, or
reject it (or ask for improvements). In any case, by the end of the
process every bug that has been reported will have been looked at and
some resolution will have been found. And of course, help is more than
welcome.
Given the number of open bugs at Mantis we expect to complete this
phase around mid november. After which we can immediately open 3.9
alpha and start to put in the things that would remain in the unstable
queue.
Please let us know what you think about this proposal. What we're
trying to achieve is a release that is in sync with Squeakland as much
as possible without introducing some more "experimental" changes at
this point (e.g., we really don't want to impose large changes to the
Squeakland users at this point).
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene]

Hello all Squeakers:
I'm playing , learning and doing Squeak from 3.2 times.
I love the "discover' and "on the edge" nature of Squeak.
But sometimes the community are having Big Bang syndrome.
All begins in a point in time what is difficult to say "Hey, this a instat
zero"
And now the galaxies are diverging to increasing speed.
Don't agree ?
Now we have Basic, Full, Normal, Unstable , Squeakland and border Tweak,
Squat.
And we are so few.
So I have to choose what direction follow.
Not sure what to do, so I reading answers of you.

Edgar

[goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()]

Post by Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene
I'm playing , learning and doing Squeak from 3.2 times.
I love the "discover' and "on the edge" nature of Squeak.
But sometimes the community are having Big Bang syndrome.
All begins in a point in time what is difficult to say "Hey, this a instat
zero"
And now the galaxies are diverging to increasing speed.
Don't agree ?

:)

Post by Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene
Now we have Basic, Full, Normal, Unstable , Squeakland and border Tweak,
Squat.

Well, my take on this is that Squat is specific technology that is
intended to be merged back into Squeak. Tweak is... well, it doesn't
exist yet, does it? Squeakland is specifically for schools etc. Unstable
is for development of Squeak. Full is not a branch at all - it is just a
Basic with goodies added on top at the time of release of a new version.
I am not sure what "Normal" is?

So stick to Basic IMHO. :)

regards, Göran

[John M McIntosh]

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
Well, my take on this is that Squat is specific technology that is
intended to be merged back into Squeak. Tweak is... well, it doesn't
exist yet, does it? Squeakland is specifically for schools etc. Unstable
is for development of Squeak. Full is not a branch at all - it is just a
Basic with goodies added on top at the time of release of a new version.
I am not sure what "Normal" is?

Well I'd say Tweak exists now since it was pushed out lurking in the
Croquet Jasmine release.

http://www.opencroquet.org/Croquet_Technologies/downloads.html

Filing in the mulitple host window support plus pending patch or two
allows me to create many tweak worlds
in host windows.

For fun someone might want to try creating a Tweak Teapot using the
multiple host window support,
I've not quite done that yet so I can't say it will work. Mind in 5
minutes of poking I can't quite see how
it's done yet, and I'm not sure about the Open-GL plugin support which
is single window centric at the moment.

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
So stick to Basic IMHO. :)
regards, G?ran

--
========================================================================
===
John M. McIntosh <***@smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
========================================================================
===

[goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()]

Hi!

Post by John M McIntosh

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
Well, my take on this is that Squat is specific technology that is
intended to be merged back into Squeak. Tweak is... well, it doesn't
exist yet, does it? Squeakland is specifically for schools etc. Unstable
is for development of Squeak. Full is not a branch at all - it is just a
Basic with goodies added on top at the time of release of a new version.
I am not sure what "Normal" is?

Well I'd say Tweak exists now since it was pushed out lurking in the
Croquet Jasmine release.

Yeah, Ken Causey mentioned that too. What timing! ;)

Btw, as I assume you all understand - my use of the words "doesn't
exist" implies that we - the Squeak community - can't really take
projects into account which haven't been released to the public. Now
Tweak has been released, and suddenly we *can* start thinking about it.
But I have no idea yet what it implies for Squeak.

regards, Göran

[Doug Way]

Technically, there was a 3-week wait for an answer to Marcus' question
on Sept 19 as to whether anyone wanted to step up to handle an
m17n-only release, and Andreas offered on Oct 6. (Still a long wait,
but not as bad as 2 months.)

Before that, there was semi-consensus that 3.8 would be mostly just a
short m17n release (with maybe a small number of extra things). Then
during September, the active harvesters at the time (Stephane, Marcus
and to a lesser extent myself) decided an m17n-only release wasn't
worth the effort if we had to manage it ourselves, and started to add
more non-m17n stuff to 3.8, and Marcus asked the question on the list.

So IMHO the m17n-only 3.8 release proposal sounds reasonable, since
that group would manage it. In theory, it should not affect the
schedule we originally had for the bigger release which includes the
Squeakland updates, except that release will be called 3.9 instead of
3.8.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Who will work on 3.8 release and when?

Andreas/Ned/Yoshiki and others would control the 3.8 update stream. It
sounds like they want to get it released very soon.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
And who will work on 3.9 release and when?

Same people that were working on 3.8 last month. (Mostly yourself and
Stephane and Marcus.) I'm guessing the content will be what Stephane
suggested in his 9/28 "plan for 3.8" post, sounds like it would be
ready by the end of the year. (which does seem a bit quick after 3.8
but that's okay)

(Hopefully there will not be too many write conflicts with the
updates.list file on the updates server... that's where hand-editing
the file can be a bit dangerous. ;) )

- Doug

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
If we spent 2 months just waiting for answers, how is supposed we can
agree on any schedule?
We can just rearrange the everybody's schedules based on the demand of
one part of the community.
-- Diego

Post by stéphane ducasse
ok so this would mean
3.8 for 25 of November
beta 15 of october
3.9 for 15 of December
beta 15 of november
Do am I correct?
Andreas I discussed a lot with marcus and others and I think that the
communication should be improved.
Stef

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Marcus,

Post by Marcus Denker
So how do we resolve this? It would be nice to have a
solution that would be good for everyone.
The only solution I see is to do two releases with one
"customer" each: a fast 3.8 for squeakland, and directly
after that a 3.9 in the timeframe that we defined for 3.9.
3.9 would be the "smallland" sync release.
Would that be possible? would anybody be Ok with that?

I think from our point of view this would be a good solution.
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Doug,

Post by Doug Way
Same people that were working on 3.8 last month. (Mostly yourself and
Stephane and Marcus.) I'm guessing the content will be what Stephane
suggested in his 9/28 "plan for 3.8" post, sounds like it would be ready
by the end of the year. (which does seem a bit quick after 3.8 but that's
okay)
(Hopefully there will not be too many write conflicts with the
updates.list file on the updates server... that's where hand-editing the
file can be a bit dangerous. ;) )

I think we can make this happen without affecting anyone too much. The idea
would be to declare the unstable stream to be the road to 3.9 and
selectively re-order the updates for the "stable" stream. So what you'd get
in the unstable updates would be the 3.8 and 3.9 intermangled whereas in the
stable updates these are well-ordered. I don't see too many problems with
this and it would certainly simplify the situation and avoid any rewriting
of the server's update lists.

Cheers,
- Andreas

[stéphane ducasse]

ok for me I see now.

Stef

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Doug,

Post by Doug Way
Same people that were working on 3.8 last month. (Mostly yourself
and Stephane and Marcus.) I'm guessing the content will be what
Stephane suggested in his 9/28 "plan for 3.8" post, sounds like it
would be ready by the end of the year. (which does seem a bit quick
after 3.8 but that's okay)
(Hopefully there will not be too many write conflicts with the
updates.list file on the updates server... that's where hand-editing
the file can be a bit dangerous. ;) )

I think we can make this happen without affecting anyone too much. The
idea would be to declare the unstable stream to be the road to 3.9 and
selectively re-order the updates for the "stable" stream. So what
you'd get in the unstable updates would be the 3.8 and 3.9
intermangled whereas in the stable updates these are well-ordered. I
don't see too many problems with this and it would certainly simplify
the situation and avoid any rewriting of the server's update lists.
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Doug Way]

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Doug,

Post by Doug Way
Same people that were working on 3.8 last month. (Mostly yourself and
Stephane and Marcus.) I'm guessing the content will be what Stephane
suggested in his 9/28 "plan for 3.8" post, sounds like it would be ready
by the end of the year. (which does seem a bit quick after 3.8 but that's
okay)
(Hopefully there will not be too many write conflicts with the
updates.list file on the updates server... that's where hand-editing the
file can be a bit dangerous. ;) )

I think we can make this happen without affecting anyone too much. The idea
would be to declare the unstable stream to be the road to 3.9 and
selectively re-order the updates for the "stable" stream. So what you'd get
in the unstable updates would be the 3.8 and 3.9 intermangled whereas in the
stable updates these are well-ordered. I don't see too many problems with
this and it would certainly simplify the situation and avoid any rewriting
of the server's update lists.

That sounds about right to me. My only comment would be that using the
stable stream for the m17n/3.8 release and the unstable stream for the
future 3.9 release should be a very short term situation. As soon as
you declare 3.8beta (which I imagine would be very soon, within a
week?), we could just open the 3.9alpha stream and move everything
that's in the unstable stream into 3.9alpha (unstable). Then the
3.9alpha folks can decide when to move their own stuff from unstable to
stable.

So, as the current Release Manager guy, I'd say we should go ahead with
your proposal. (Taking Diego's concerns and everyone else's feedback
into account.) In theory there should be very little impact on the
timing of the SmallLand-synched release.

My comment about the updates.list file was mostly just pointing out the
potential file-locking issue. :-) As long as we don't have two people
writing to the file around the same time, we should be okay. (The
original update-broadcasting mechanism doesn't work anymore, although
it'd probably be easy to fix, and probably should be fixed. For myself,
when I was posting 30 updates at a time, it was easier to edit the
updates.list file by hand. But since we now have a number of people
posting updates, if everyone does it by hand, there's a better chance of
having write conflicts.) Although perhaps that was your point about
keeping the 3.9 stuff in unstable for a while longer, since the unstable
stream is a different physical file (SqCupdates.list).

- Doug

[Bert Freudenberg]

Post by Doug Way
My comment about the updates.list file was mostly just pointing out the
potential file-locking issue. :-) As long as we don't have two people
writing to the file around the same time, we should be okay. (The
original update-broadcasting mechanism doesn't work anymore, although
it'd probably be easy to fix, and probably should be fixed.

Hmm, works for me, at least in the Squeakland release.

Post by Doug Way
For myself, when I was posting 30 updates at a time, it was easier to
edit the
updates.list file by hand. But since we now have a number of people
posting updates, if everyone does it by hand, there's a better chance of
having write conflicts.) Although perhaps that was your point about
keeping the 3.9 stuff in unstable for a while longer, since the unstable
stream is a different physical file (SqCupdates.list).

Actually, it's Unstableupdates.list - SqCupdates.list should probably
get removed from the server.

- Bert -

[Doug Way]

Post by Bert Freudenberg

Post by Doug Way
My comment about the updates.list file was mostly just pointing out the
potential file-locking issue. :-) As long as we don't have two people
writing to the file around the same time, we should be okay. (The
original update-broadcasting mechanism doesn't work anymore, although
it'd probably be easy to fix, and probably should be fixed.

Hmm, works for me, at least in the Squeakland release.

Ah, so it does, I just tried it. Well, that's good! I think it was
broken for a while after the networking updates in 3.6, and then
something related must have been fixed since then.

(Although we need to add an entry to broadcast to the unstable stream.)

- Doug

[Marcus Denker]

Post by Doug Way

Post by Bert Freudenberg

Post by Doug Way
My comment about the updates.list file was mostly just pointing out the
potential file-locking issue. :-) As long as we don't have two people
writing to the file around the same time, we should be okay. (The
original update-broadcasting mechanism doesn't work anymore, although
it'd probably be easy to fix, and probably should be fixed.

Hmm, works for me, at least in the Squeakland release.

Ah, so it does, I just tried it. Well, that's good! I think it was
broken for a while after the networking updates in 3.6, and then
something related must have been fixed since then.
(Although we need to add an entry to broadcast to the unstable stream.)

Any news on 3.8? It's now again a week later... there should be a beta

Post by Doug Way
3.8 for 25 of November
beta 15 of october
3.9 for 15 of December
beta 15 of november

Marcus

[Michael Rueger]

Post by Marcus Denker
Any news on 3.8? It's now again a week later... there should be a beta

We're on it. News coming really soon now :-)

Michael

[stéphane ducasse]

I think that in general continuing to push items in unstable is a nice
process. Now we will have to pay attention to know how to proceed for
3.8. So let me know how this could work. Should we stop pushing items
in unstable while people are fixing 3.8?
Stef

Post by Doug Way
Technically, there was a 3-week wait for an answer to Marcus' question
on Sept 19 as to whether anyone wanted to step up to handle an
m17n-only release, and Andreas offered on Oct 6. (Still a long wait,
but not as bad as 2 months.)
Before that, there was semi-consensus that 3.8 would be mostly just a
short m17n release (with maybe a small number of extra things). Then
during September, the active harvesters at the time (Stephane, Marcus
and to a lesser extent myself) decided an m17n-only release wasn't
worth the effort if we had to manage it ourselves, and started to add
more non-m17n stuff to 3.8, and Marcus asked the question on the list.
So IMHO the m17n-only 3.8 release proposal sounds reasonable, since
that group would manage it. In theory, it should not affect the
schedule we originally had for the bigger release which includes the
Squeakland updates, except that release will be called 3.9 instead of
3.8.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
Who will work on 3.8 release and when?

Andreas/Ned/Yoshiki and others would control the 3.8 update stream.
It sounds like they want to get it released very soon.

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
And who will work on 3.9 release and when?

Same people that were working on 3.8 last month. (Mostly yourself and
Stephane and Marcus.) I'm guessing the content will be what Stephane
suggested in his 9/28 "plan for 3.8" post, sounds like it would be
ready by the end of the year. (which does seem a bit quick after 3.8
but that's okay)
(Hopefully there will not be too many write conflicts with the
updates.list file on the updates server... that's where hand-editing
the file can be a bit dangerous. ;) )
- Doug

Post by Diego Gomez Deck
If we spent 2 months just waiting for answers, how is supposed we can
agree on any schedule?
We can just rearrange the everybody's schedules based on the demand of
one part of the community.
-- Diego

Post by stéphane ducasse
ok so this would mean
3.8 for 25 of November
beta 15 of october
3.9 for 15 of December
beta 15 of november
Do am I correct?
Andreas I discussed a lot with marcus and others and I think that the
communication should be improved.
Stef

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Marcus,

Post by Marcus Denker
So how do we resolve this? It would be nice to have a
solution that would be good for everyone.
The only solution I see is to do two releases with one
"customer" each: a fast 3.8 for squeakland, and directly
after that a 3.9 in the timeframe that we defined for 3.9.
3.9 would be the "smallland" sync release.
Would that be possible? would anybody be Ok with that?

I think from our point of view this would be a good solution.
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene]

Post by John M McIntosh

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
Well, my take on this is that Squat is specific technology that is
intended to be merged back into Squeak. Tweak is... well, it doesn't
exist yet, does it? Squeakland is specifically for schools etc.
Unstable
is for development of Squeak. Full is not a branch at all - it is just
a
Basic with goodies added on top at the time of release of a new
version.
I am not sure what "Normal" is?

Well I'd say Tweak exists now since it was pushed out lurking in the
Croquet Jasmine release.
http://www.opencroquet.org/Croquet_Technologies/downloads.html
Filing in the mulitple host window support plus pending patch or two
allows me to create many tweak worlds
in host windows.
For fun someone might want to try creating a Tweak Teapot using the
multiple host window support,
I've not quite done that yet so I can't say it will work. Mind in 5
minutes of poking I can't quite see how
it's done yet, and I'm not sure about the Open-GL plugin support which
is single window centric at the moment.

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
So stick to Basic IMHO. :)
regards, G?ran

--
========================================================================
===
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
========================================================================
===

And I downloaded it , begins to test and love and start figuring how
converting to Light version (I learned how to get 3.6 Morphic to 3.7 Mb , so
I hope soon achieve this)
John , Tim and Tweak guys have done a terrific job, and chances are two
years from now we don't still using Morphic.

Goran, I forget send a BRAVO for you work and yes for everyday use I stick
to 3.7 Basic , but we don't are here for "inventing the future ?"

Edgar

[goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()]

Hi!

Post by Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene
Goran, I forget send a BRAVO for you work and yes for everyday use I stick
to 3.7 Basic , but we don't are here for "inventing the future ?"

Sure we are! Or at least many of us are. But in this context - I am not
sure what it means.
Given my true ignorance on the subject, how does Tweak relate to Squeak
and Morphic?

I mean, some questions:

1. Is Tweak meant to replace Morphic alltogether in the long run? Or is
it only replacing parts of Morphic?

2. Is Tweak meant to be something that can work on top of official
Squeak, or is it only targeted at Croquet? Croquet is currently not a
"fork" of Squeak, but it may very well turn out to become one. And if
the principal developers behind Tweak are the Croqueteers, it may
perhaps turn into something Croquet specific.

Well, as I said - I am not sure yet how Tweak (or Croquet for that
matter) really relates to Squeak. And since I guess the Croqueteers
aren't sure themselves :) it is all a bit foggy right now. To me at
least. :)

Post by Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene
Edgar

regards, Göran

[Marcus Denker]

The following remarks are just my personal opinion...

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
1. Is Tweak meant to replace Morphic alltogether in the long run?

Yes. Please.

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
2. Is Tweak meant to be something that can work on top of official
Squeak, or is it only targeted at Croquet? Croquet is currently not a
"fork" of Squeak, but it may very well turn out to become one. And if
the principal developers behind Tweak are the Croqueteers, it may
perhaps turn into something Croquet specific.

I think it would make no sense to have Tweak just in Croquet. I mean,
it's architecture and code quality is way much better then morphic's.

Marcus

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Goran,

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
1. Is Tweak meant to replace Morphic alltogether in the long run? Or is
it only replacing parts of Morphic?

It is clearly intended to be a replacement of Morphic. Replacing "parts"
makes little or no sense as it would break too many things that need fixing.
However, we realize and acknowledge the fact that Morphic will stick around
for a long time (similar to MVC which is still in Squeak) and the only thing
we am working on is the ability to get rid of both MVC and Morphic if that
is desirable (which it will for packaging purposes but not for a long time
as most of the tools are available for Morphic).

Meaning that although Tweak is intended to be a Morphic replacement it
*will* work in parallel to and together with Morphic (not necessarily vice
versa since that again would mean fixing many different things in Morphic
that I cannot possibly be bothered to fix). I should also mention that the
Tk4 efforts play an important role here as they are intended to hammer out
some of the issues for integrating Tweak into "different window managers" -
e.g., you can expect that once this works you might have "native Morphic
windows" which host Tweak environments similar to any other kind of window.

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
2. Is Tweak meant to be something that can work on top of official
Squeak, or is it only targeted at Croquet? Croquet is currently not a
"fork" of Squeak, but it may very well turn out to become one. And if
the principal developers behind Tweak are the Croqueteers, it may
perhaps turn into something Croquet specific.

That depends on your definition of "Squeak" and "Croquet". Some people take
the (overly simplified) point of view that Croquet is ultimately about 3D
environments but let me tell you: It is not. It is ultimately about
collaboration and communcation and there are many different ways of doing
this, some of which imply a 3D space (having the vast advantage of providing
context for the collaboration and a natural model for navigating large
spaces) and some of which don't. *All* of them, however will require a
distributed, loosely coupled, secure messaging model of replicated
computation between (mutually distrusting) objects and peers. Which is what
we internally understand as "Croquet"; a much broader, much wider ranging
collaboration architecture that includes many different areas of
communication, many different classes of devices, many different user
interfaces. (and yes, we really aren't there by a long shot but then again I
will want to have something to work on five years from now ;-)

Given that definition I can say with utter certainty that Tweak is meant to
run on top of Croquet, with "collaboration builtin". Whether that can run on
"top of official Squeak" depends on whether Croquet can run "on top of
official Squeak" and that largely depends on how drastic the required
changes from the research to the engineering track are, i.e., I do not have
a good answer. Personally, I would be surprised if the changes were too
drastic to make it work at all but then again you never know - we certainly
have been talking about some quite orthogonal directions to using Squeak.

But does that matter? Practically speaking, no. All it means is that an
infrastructure is in place which enables you to do tight collaboration using
these objects. That - for example - the objects have builtin policies to be
able to interact with multiple users (what is a double-click in a
collaboration environment?) that they know about replication strategies etc.
OTOH, if you are interested in building "smart clients" (this is a term that
I have lately heard to distinguish apps from "thin but dumb" clients) it
actually gives you ways to move the boundary between client and server in a
way that has been impossible before - starting from a really, really dumb
client (which would resemble something like VNC or the X-Windows protocol)
up to a really, really smart client (which would effectively be a P2P
network with no server other than for getting some code). So there are
certainly opportunities in the areas of distributed computation - even for
"boring old business apps" which suddenly might become just a little
smarter, and just a little more usable than before.

But I disgress ;-)

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
Well, as I said - I am not sure yet how Tweak (or Croquet for that
matter) really relates to Squeak. And since I guess the Croqueteers
aren't sure themselves :) it is all a bit foggy right now. To me at
least. :)

I think the best way to describe the *current* relation between Squeak,
Croquet and Tweak is to say: Squeak is being used by both. Both systems have
a set of requirements which are met by Squeak - mostly that of having a
fairly simple late-bound object system with good programming tools and -most
importantly- the ability to change everything top-to-bottom. I fully expect
to port both forward to the next Squeak release which contains m17n (again
"using" Squeak) but whether that's going to stay that way is a different
question.

Okay, I know I shouldn't do it but I am going to hint a little bit at the
future: Personally, one of my major goals is to -oh my god- get rid of the
current Squeak VM and replace it with something infinitely more flexible,
elegant, and fast. That would be a major step away from what we currently
have under the name of "official Squeak" but it seems to me that we have
both the technology and the people to make this happen and I will be damned
if I miss that chance.

Secondly, security is going to be one of the major thrusts of our efforts
which (not surprisingly) will address the issue of modularity - by the end
of the day, in order to be successful we must be able to replicate code on
arbitrary machines of the internet, run it securely, and get rid of it with
(literally) no traces left. I believe that's absolutely doable and, again,
we have the technology and the people to do it (shameless plug on "how to do
security right": http://www.erights.org and
https://www.cypherpunks.to/erights/talks/uni-tea/uni-tea.ppt for how this
might work in the context of Croquet).

Thirdly, the time is ripe for some REAL progress on the front of end-user
programming, towards a system that is able to speak to the user in the form
that the user knows about or wishes to use, to have a system that is capable
of explaining itself to the user, that tells you where to start, what to
look for, who to ask. A system that includes lots of exemplary programming
styles, varieties on the languages you use all of which brings security and
distributed computing to the end-user.

Cheers,
- Andreas

[Marcus Denker]

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Goran,

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
1. Is Tweak meant to replace Morphic alltogether in the long run? Or is
it only replacing parts of Morphic?

It is clearly intended to be a replacement of Morphic. Replacing
"parts" makes little or no sense as it would break too many things
that need fixing. However, we realize and acknowledge the fact that
Morphic will stick around for a long time (similar to MVC which is
still in Squeak) and the only thing we am working on is the ability to
get rid of both MVC and Morphic if that is desirable (which it will
for packaging purposes but not for a long time as most of the tools
are available for Morphic).

The tools are in Morphic now, but porting them to Tweak is quite simple.

Post by Andreas Raab
I think the best way to describe the *current* relation between
Squeak, Croquet and Tweak is to say: Squeak is being used by both.
Both systems have a set of requirements which are met by Squeak -
mostly that of having a fairly simple late-bound object system with
good programming tools and -most importantly- the ability to change
everything top-to-bottom. I fully expect to port both forward to the
next Squeak release which contains m17n (again "using" Squeak) but
whether that's going to stay that way is a different question.

I'm quite sure that if there would be a TeaTime enabled tweak based
system (using that new VM stuff), I would use it for all my work.
As would most other people, I guess. For me, Squeak was and is about
moving forward. Not implementing the past.

So at that point, there would just be no "next release" of Squeak in
the sense of today's Squeak, as everybody would be contributing to the
new system.
(Of course, this is just playing with words: For me, "Squeak" never
meant the hack based on St80 we have now, but a vision for a new system
of the
future).

One thing (and that is really important): It would be good to have some
idea of how and when this transitions will happen. Will it be a hard
switch
or a gradual transition? If we all know that we will use "the new
thing" it would be nice to be able to put work into that at some point
instead of
something that later does not get used. (e.g. the harvesting I do is
mostly completly not relevant for me personally. If I would put as much
work into
another release as I did in 3.7 and 3.8, and later nobody uses it, that
would not be fun. Of course, just stopping "because there will be
something
better in the future" is not the right thing, either. Not doing the
trivial improvement because a better one might come in the future is a
great way
of making sure that nothing happens at all.

Marcus

[stéphane ducasse]

Post by Marcus Denker
I'm quite sure that if there would be a TeaTime enabled tweak based
system (using that new VM stuff), I would use it for all my work.
As would most other people, I guess. For me, Squeak was and is about
moving forward. Not implementing the past.
So at that point, there would just be no "next release" of Squeak in
the sense of today's Squeak, as everybody would be contributing to the
new system.
(Of course, this is just playing with words: For me, "Squeak" never
meant the hack based on St80 we have now, but a vision for a new
system of the
future).
One thing (and that is really important): It would be good to have
some idea of how and when this transitions will happen. Will it be a
hard switch
or a gradual transition? If we all know that we will use "the new
thing" it would be nice to be able to put work into that at some point
instead of
something that later does not get used. (e.g. the harvesting I do is
mostly completly not relevant for me personally. If I would put as
much work into
another release as I did in 3.7 and 3.8, and later nobody uses it,
that would not be fun. Of course, just stopping "because there will be
something
better in the future" is not the right thing, either. Not doing the
trivial improvement because a better one might come in the future is a
great way
of making sure that nothing happens at all.

100% in sync with me.

Stef

[stéphane ducasse]

Andreas

This sounds cool :) I want that future. I was really thinking that now
that java is nearly as complex a C++ :) and smalltalk too old :)
having a new cool dynamic language with the Smalltalk essence (late
bound, pure, uniform, simple, elegant) + security
would be cool. But I'm disgressing too :)

I think that the most important aspect is that people should find the
new stuff more sexy, useful and the transition with
follow. This is why tweak is important because morphic is a legacy
system (made his time, but bloated and need to pass away).

Stef

By the way andreas you should get in sync with marcus because his work
on the new compiler could really help you for your
tweak extensions.

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Goran,

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
1. Is Tweak meant to replace Morphic alltogether in the long run? Or is
it only replacing parts of Morphic?

It is clearly intended to be a replacement of Morphic. Replacing
"parts" makes little or no sense as it would break too many things
that need fixing. However, we realize and acknowledge the fact that
Morphic will stick around for a long time (similar to MVC which is
still in Squeak) and the only thing we am working on is the ability to
get rid of both MVC and Morphic if that is desirable (which it will
for packaging purposes but not for a long time as most of the tools
are available for Morphic).
Meaning that although Tweak is intended to be a Morphic replacement it
*will* work in parallel to and together with Morphic (not necessarily
vice versa since that again would mean fixing many different things in
Morphic that I cannot possibly be bothered to fix). I should also
mention that the Tk4 efforts play an important role here as they are
intended to hammer out some of the issues for integrating Tweak into
"different window managers" - e.g., you can expect that once this
works you might have "native Morphic windows" which host Tweak
environments similar to any other kind of window.

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
2. Is Tweak meant to be something that can work on top of official
Squeak, or is it only targeted at Croquet? Croquet is currently not a
"fork" of Squeak, but it may very well turn out to become one. And if
the principal developers behind Tweak are the Croqueteers, it may
perhaps turn into something Croquet specific.

That depends on your definition of "Squeak" and "Croquet". Some people
take the (overly simplified) point of view that Croquet is ultimately
about 3D environments but let me tell you: It is not. It is ultimately
about collaboration and communcation and there are many different ways
of doing this, some of which imply a 3D space (having the vast
advantage of providing context for the collaboration and a natural
model for navigating large spaces) and some of which don't. *All* of
them, however will require a distributed, loosely coupled, secure
messaging model of replicated computation between (mutually
distrusting) objects and peers. Which is what we internally understand
as "Croquet"; a much broader, much wider ranging collaboration
architecture that includes many different areas of communication, many
different classes of devices, many different user interfaces. (and
yes, we really aren't there by a long shot but then again I will want
to have something to work on five years from now ;-)
Given that definition I can say with utter certainty that Tweak is
meant to run on top of Croquet, with "collaboration builtin". Whether
that can run on "top of official Squeak" depends on whether Croquet
can run "on top of official Squeak" and that largely depends on how
drastic the required changes from the research to the engineering
track are, i.e., I do not have a good answer. Personally, I would be
surprised if the changes were too drastic to make it work at all but
then again you never know - we certainly have been talking about some
quite orthogonal directions to using Squeak.
But does that matter? Practically speaking, no. All it means is that
an infrastructure is in place which enables you to do tight
collaboration using these objects. That - for example - the objects
have builtin policies to be able to interact with multiple users (what
is a double-click in a collaboration environment?) that they know
about replication strategies etc. OTOH, if you are interested in
building "smart clients" (this is a term that I have lately heard to
distinguish apps from "thin but dumb" clients) it actually gives you
ways to move the boundary between client and server in a way that has
been impossible before - starting from a really, really dumb client
(which would resemble something like VNC or the X-Windows protocol) up
to a really, really smart client (which would effectively be a P2P
network with no server other than for getting some code). So there are
certainly opportunities in the areas of distributed computation - even
for "boring old business apps" which suddenly might become just a
little smarter, and just a little more usable than before.
But I disgress ;-)

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
Well, as I said - I am not sure yet how Tweak (or Croquet for that
matter) really relates to Squeak. And since I guess the Croqueteers
aren't sure themselves :) it is all a bit foggy right now. To me at
least. :)

I think the best way to describe the *current* relation between
Squeak, Croquet and Tweak is to say: Squeak is being used by both.
Both systems have a set of requirements which are met by Squeak -
mostly that of having a fairly simple late-bound object system with
good programming tools and -most importantly- the ability to change
everything top-to-bottom. I fully expect to port both forward to the
next Squeak release which contains m17n (again "using" Squeak) but
whether that's going to stay that way is a different question.
Okay, I know I shouldn't do it but I am going to hint a little bit at
the future: Personally, one of my major goals is to -oh my god- get
rid of the current Squeak VM and replace it with something infinitely
more flexible, elegant, and fast. That would be a major step away from
what we currently have under the name of "official Squeak" but it
seems to me that we have both the technology and the people to make
this happen and I will be damned if I miss that chance.
Secondly, security is going to be one of the major thrusts of our
efforts which (not surprisingly) will address the issue of modularity
- by the end of the day, in order to be successful we must be able to
replicate code on arbitrary machines of the internet, run it securely,
and get rid of it with (literally) no traces left. I believe that's
absolutely doable and, again, we have the technology and the people to
http://www.erights.org and
https://www.cypherpunks.to/erights/talks/uni-tea/uni-tea.ppt for how
this might work in the context of Croquet).
Thirdly, the time is ripe for some REAL progress on the front of
end-user programming, towards a system that is able to speak to the
user in the form that the user knows about or wishes to use, to have a
system that is capable of explaining itself to the user, that tells
you where to start, what to look for, who to ask. A system that
includes lots of exemplary programming styles, varieties on the
languages you use all of which brings security and distributed
computing to the end-user.
Cheers,
- Andreas

[Darius Clarke]

Thirdly, the time is ripe for some REAL progress on the front of
end-user
programming, towards a system that is able to speak to the user in the
form
that the user knows about or wishes to use, to have a system that is
capable
of explaining itself to the user, that tells you where to start, what to
look for, who to ask. A system that includes lots of exemplary
programming
styles, varieties on the languages you use all of which brings security
and
distributed computing to the end-user.



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[SmallSqueak]

Post by Marcus Denker

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Goran,

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
1. Is Tweak meant to replace Morphic alltogether in the long run? Or
is
it only replacing parts of Morphic?

It is clearly intended to be a replacement of Morphic. Replacing
"parts" makes little or no sense as it would break too many things
that need fixing. However, we realize and acknowledge the fact that
Morphic will stick around for a long time (similar to MVC which is
still in Squeak) and the only thing we am working on is the ability to
get rid of both MVC and Morphic if that is desirable (which it will
for packaging purposes but not for a long time as most of the tools
are available for Morphic).

The tools are in Morphic now, but porting them to Tweak is quite simple.

Is there any other reason not to drop both Morphic and MVC now ?

Post by Marcus Denker

Post by Andreas Raab
I think the best way to describe the *current* relation between
Squeak, Croquet and Tweak is to say: Squeak is being used by both.
Both systems have a set of requirements which are met by Squeak -
mostly that of having a fairly simple late-bound object system with
good programming tools and -most importantly- the ability to change
everything top-to-bottom. I fully expect to port both forward to the
next Squeak release which contains m17n (again "using" Squeak) but
whether that's going to stay that way is a different question.

I'm quite sure that if there would be a TeaTime enabled tweak based
system (using that new VM stuff), I would use it for all my work.
As would most other people, I guess. For me, Squeak was and is about
moving forward. Not implementing the past.
So at that point, there would just be no "next release" of Squeak in
the sense of today's Squeak, as everybody would be contributing to the
new system.
(Of course, this is just playing with words: For me, "Squeak" never
meant the hack based on St80 we have now, but a vision for a new system
of the future).
One thing (and that is really important): It would be good to have some
idea of how and when this transitions will happen. Will it be a hard
switch or a gradual transition? If we all know that we will use "the new
thing" it would be nice to be able to put work into that at some point
instead of something that later does not get used. (e.g. the harvesting
I do is mostly completly not relevant for me personally. If I would put
as much work into another release as I did in 3.7 and 3.8, and later nobody
uses it, that would not be fun.
Of course, just stopping "because there will be something
better in the future" is not the right thing, either. Not doing the
trivial improvement because a better one might come in the future is a
great way of making sure that nothing happens at all.

Somehow, I lost the respond from the Croqueteers on the issues
that Marcus raised.

Cheers,

PhiHo.
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[SmallSqueak]

Re: Big Bang [Re: Proposal for Squeak 3.8 release schedule]Hi Andreas,

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Goran,

[SNIP]

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
2. Is Tweak meant to be something that can work on top of official
Squeak, or is it only targeted at Croquet? Croquet is currently not a
"fork" of Squeak, but it may very well turn out to become one. And if
the principal developers behind Tweak are the Croqueteers, it may
perhaps turn into something Croquet specific.

That depends on your definition of "Squeak" and "Croquet". Some people take
the (overly simplified) point of view that Croquet is ultimately about 3D
environments but let me tell you: It is not. It is ultimately about
collaboration and communcation and there are many different ways of doing
this, some of which imply a 3D space (having the vast advantage of providing
context for the collaboration and a natural model for navigating large
spaces) and some of which don't. *All* of them, however will require a
distributed, loosely coupled, secure messaging model of replicated
computation between (mutually distrusting) objects and peers. Which is what
we internally understand as "Croquet"; a much broader, much wider ranging
collaboration architecture that includes many different areas of
communication, many different classes of devices, many different user
interfaces. (and yes, we really aren't there by a long shot but then again I
will want to have something to work on five years from now ;-)
Given that definition I can say with utter certainty that Tweak is meant to
run on top of Croquet, with "collaboration builtin".

Would you please elaborate on this ?

What is it meant by "collaboration builtin" and why does Tweak
(what exactly is Tweak, anyway) depends on builtin collaboration ?

[SNIP]

Cheers,

PhiHo.

P.S:

BTW, IIRC, at some stage you (on behalf of the Croqueteers ?)
promised (?) that Croquet would be available as a package on SM ?
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[PhiHo Hoang]

Re: Big Bang [Re: Proposal for Squeak 3.8 release schedule]Hi Andreas,

Post by Andreas Raab
Hi Goran,

[SNIP]

Post by Andreas Raab

Post by goran.krampe at bluefish.se ()
2. Is Tweak meant to be something that can work on top of official
Squeak, or is it only targeted at Croquet? Croquet is currently not a
"fork" of Squeak, but it may very well turn out to become one. And if
the principal developers behind Tweak are the Croqueteers, it may
perhaps turn into something Croquet specific.

That depends on your definition of "Squeak" and "Croquet". Some people take
the (overly simplified) point of view that Croquet is ultimately about 3D
environments but let me tell you: It is not. It is ultimately about
collaboration and communcation and there are many different ways of doing
this, some of which imply a 3D space (having the vast advantage of providing
context for the collaboration and a natural model for navigating large
spaces) and some of which don't. *All* of them, however will require a
distributed, loosely coupled, secure messaging model of replicated
computation between (mutually distrusting) objects and peers. Which is what
we internally understand as "Croquet"; a much broader, much wider ranging
collaboration architecture that includes many different areas of
communication, many different classes of devices, many different user
interfaces. (and yes, we really aren't there by a long shot but then again I
will want to have something to work on five years from now ;-)
Given that definition I can say with utter certainty that Tweak is meant to
run on top of Croquet, with "collaboration builtin".

Would you please elaborate on this ?

What is it meant by "collaboration builtin" and why does Tweak
(what exactly is Tweak, anyway) depends on builtin collaboration ?

[SNIP]

Cheers,

PhiHo.

P.S:

BTW, IIRC, at some stage you (on behalf of the Croqueteers ?)
promised (?) that Croquet would be available as a package on SM ?
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