Re: Squeak downloads

Hi andreas

this looks good to me and I hope this will help the people reading my 
books.
I will ask my boss to have a look because he always complained with the 
other one.

Stef


On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 05:46 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

> Hi Guys,
>
> I had recently the need to review the download and installation of 
> Squeak on
> various platforms and to be honest - it's a mess. If you try to find 
> your
> way around Squeak.org's download area you get lost so incredibly fast, 
> it's
> amazing that some people manage to get Squeak anyways.
>
> Since I know that all of you are busy, I've done some work on it. My
> proposal is to link from Squeak.org directly into the main Squeak 
> Swiki and
> there, provide a download page as can be seen at:
>
> 	http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3262
>
>
> Let me say a few words about what I'm trying to do here.
>
> First of all, the point is to download Squeak not to look at funny 
> pictures.
> The eye-candy at Squeak.org is certainly nice but when it comes to 
> download
> we want those files - and nothing more. So there are quite 
> deliberately no
> icons on this page.
>
> Secondly, I think people often look for documentation of Squeak most of
> which is found at the Swiki. Hosting the download page at the Swiki 
> itself
> means that *everyone* who has ever downloaded Squeak has seen the 
> Swiki at
> least once. That's what the first sentence in the above is for - so 
> people
> know they are now at the right place. In addition, using a Swiki means 
> we
> can much more easily change and update things. When a new version gets 
> out
> we just change it and then, as the latest platform bundles come in, 
> update
> the information appropriately. The download area at the Swiki also 
> means we
> have a more level playing ground for alternative ports (you may see 
> that one
> entry lists MobVM which is otherwise impossible to find).
>
> About the contents of the download table:
> * "full" means a bundle that absolutely includes everything you need 
> to run
> Squeak. As we don't provide this for all packages we may have some 
> missing
> entries. However, it's a Swiki so it's simple for people to make one 
> up on
> their own and we just link it.
> * "image" means image+changes+sources for the listed "stable" version 
> of
> that platform. Nothing is more bothering than to see that a BeOS port 
> exist
> but not to know what one needs to download.
> * "stable VM" means the latest stable VM known to run well for the 
> listed
> stable version of Squeak. Therefore, "image" + "stable VM" is 
> everything you
> need if you haven't a full package available
> * "VM source code" explicitly links to the source code for the VM in
> question. Many people find it extremely hard to find the sources for 
> VMs so
> here we can point them directly towards it.
>
> In addition, we have an "info" link which allows us to link to specific
> places for some VM/port. This allows us to decouple the primary 
> download
> place from information such as port maintainer, release notes, 
> specific bits
> about the platform. All of this is useful information but it should be
> hosted elsewhere.
>
> Based on the above download page, I figure that a new Squeak release 
> process
> (exemplified with 3.6) would consist of the following steps:
> a) we make a copy of the current download page and name it 
> appropriately
> (such as "DownloadsForSqueak3.5") - this is now a "previous version"
> b) change the latest stable version and link to the previous version. 
> In
> effect this means you can always wander backwards through all the old
> versions and get - for example - exactly the "right" VM for Squeak 3.2 
> or
> so. Therefore we only need to link to some previous versions here.
> c) Update the links for the "primary" full/image packages which Bruce
> handles.
>
>> From here on, we can leave everything as is. If we have some platform
> maintainer who wants to update his or her port, she can simply update 
> "her
> row" in the table. So it's a very simple, straightforward and obvious
> process which means that if people are interested they have a single 
> place
> where they can download about everything that's interesting about 
> Squeak.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
>
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