Re: 3.4 release

Ian Piumarta wrote:
> 
> ...
> > > and possibly at least one pre-built Unix VM.
> > > (Which one(s)?  Probably Linux at least.)
> 
> I can do Linux (ppc/x86) and FreeBSD (x86) with no more hassle than typing
> `make' in a few different places.

That would be great.

> > > - Should we wait a few days between steps 1 and 2?  This would let
> > > people test the final image a bit just to make sure there wasn't some
> > > major problem, and maybe check out any final cosmetic tweaks.  Also, it
> > > would give the VM maintainers a few days to get their VMs ready.  But
> > > perhaps this isn't necessary... maybe we should make sure the VMs are
> > > ready before we declare 3.4 final.  (Certainly they should be almost
> > > ready anyway.)
> >
> > Hmmm. The best would probably be to give the port maintainers a chance
> > to produce and verify new VMs. Otherwise we may end up with a port
> > needing some tweak to the image to work but the image was just marked
> > final... Ooops.
> >
> > What do you say, port guys? (Tim, Ian, John, Andreas)
> 
> Judging by the (lack of) recent commit activity I suspect the Mac/Win VMs
> are pretty stable.  For Unix though it sounds like a safer plan to me,
> especially if a few people volunteer to test the VMs thoroughly.  (In
> addition to several minor fixes that I've collected over the last couple
> of months there's a bunch of new FFI support code.  OTOH, there's
> absolutely no obligation at all to pull this new code into the VM right
> now.  We could be content with the few minor fixes and leave the rest for
> the ongoing major overhaul of the Unix code, which is due out in a week or
> two and is _huge_.  Given the intention to announce things in public
> forums, a solid VM seems preferable to a much more capable -- but far less
> tested -- one.)

I tend to agree with the latter half of this, that it is probably better to go with the solid VM with a few minor fixes, and save the major changes for after the 3.4 release.  People will still be able to run the newer VM with the 3.4 image later if they want.

> Speaking of which (which we were, even if it wasn't evident) is there
> anything in the 3.4 image w.r.t. VMM, Interpreter, et al., which is
> different to what's in a fully-updated TeaSqueak/Croquet image?  I'm
> currently using the latter since it has BitBlt additions that aren't in
> 3.4 (or at least they weren't the last time I looked).

I don't have a strong opinion on this, although I suppose that Tim has a point that it's good for the released 3.4 VM to actually match the interpreter etc code in the image.  But perhaps Unix VM builders haven't typically been building from the code in the image anyway.  In any case, let's just decide on something. ;-)

> > > - Which Unix VMs should be available immediately upon the release of
> > > 3.4?  Sources?  A Linux VM?  Debian and/or RPMs?  Obviously we don't
> >
> > Personally I think a source release from Ian is enough, as long as Ian
> > has verified that the most popular *nix VM works. That would be Linux.
> 
> I have debian installed on both ppc and x86 machines, so I could easily
> build .rpms and .debs for these two architectures.  I've never tried
> building a FreeBSD package so I don't know if it would be feasible or not
> to put one together in short order.  (As an irrelevant data point, I'm
> developing/maintaining the Unix support code almost exclusively under
> Mac OS X these days.)

To summarize somewhat, I think at a minimum we could just require that the source release plus the Linux-x86 prebuilt VM are on the ftp site, in order to declare 3.4 available for Unix.  If Ian can also build for ppc, .rpms & .debs, FreeBSD etc without too much trouble, that would also be great, but not absolutely required.  Whichever are easiest. :-)

- Doug
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Tim Rowledge wrote:
> 
> It looks to me like we need the minor tweak to makeSoundSeed (or
> whatever it is) that Julian posted. Aside from that I think your
> timeline looks good.  I have a RiscOS VM package ready to go.

Yes, I thought about that one, and wasn't sure whether it qualified as a critical last-minute fix.  But it seems like a safe fix, and it is a recently introduced problem (and a significant problem for anyone using UUIDs), so now I'm thinking we should include the fix.

Actually, would anyone object if I fixed this by simply commenting out the call to makeSeedFromSound (in UUIDGenerator>>makeSeed) altogether?  I think relying on /dev/urandom and then millisecondClockValue as a backup to get a seed should be sufficient.  I'm not convinced that getting a number from the sound input might not return the same number (such as 0) over and over in certain situations, such as when there's no sound input device, although I could be wrong.  (Cees mentioned that this part of the code was pretty experimental anyway.  We mostly wanted the part which flushes the default generator on startup, from his original changeset #5150.)

So we can include this fix, plus make a few cosmetic image tweaks which Tim suggested earlier.  I think it would be reasonably safe to mark this as the final image and not bother with another gamma realse.  We would still have the "few days" after this for the VMs to get in order, which would allow a little time to catch any (unlikely) major problem with the image.

There is also the problem being discussed about the ClassBuilder, but that sounds like a rather thorny problem to try to fix in time for 3.4.  There hasn't even been a fix proposed yet... but I s'pose if a fix comes along which appears straightforward, we could possibly include it.  But that would definitely require building a gammaTwo image and letting people test it for a good while.

- Doug
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Finally replying to this earlier message...

Tim Rowledge wrote:
> 
> A couple of thoughts on the text in the Welcome to... window:-
> 
> Since the entire code for the vm is _not_ included (and actually never
> was except for Macs of course) we should rephrase that bit.
> How about:-
> "Squeak is a rapidly moving project based on Smalltalk-80, with which
> it is still reasonably compatible. Squeak includes a full integrated
> development environment, networking, sound synthesis and sampling,
> speech synthesis, 2 & 3D graphics, arithmetic and data structure
> libraries. It even incorporates tools to produce the core code for its
> own virtual machine so that you can build your own VM; see <whatever the
> url for the vm making page on swiki is>"

Those changes sound good to me.  (I was going to complain the you removed a bit about all source code being included, but that's still covered in the following paragraph in the Welcome window.)

Actually, a minor quibble: Including a longish URL related to VM-making seems like a bit much in the very first intro paragraph to Squeak.  Perhaps we can interrupt the flow less by ending your last sentence with "...build your own VM." and then linking just the word "VM" to the VMMaker page on the swiki, by creating an alt-6 DoIt: VM<Scamper openOnUrl: 'http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2105'>

> Why is the old Back to the future page pointed to as an ftp fetch? Can't
> we put it on the squeak.org website 'normally'?

Not sure, probably a good idea for the next time we update the website. (not high priority, though)

> The Projects section notes "Others, probably more recent than this
> release, may be found (someday)..." - shouldn't this be less tentative
> by now?

Yes, that should be changed.  To what, I don't know. ;-)  It looks like the stepping-stone project that it refers to was never fleshed out.  Perhaps we should change it to "Other projects may be found by selecting the 'FIND' button on the Navigator bar at the bottom of the screen."

(Of course, the SuperSwiki has been around for awhile now and has lots of older projects and no mechanism for making sure that you're downloading a project that is compatible with 3.4.  But what the heck, the Navigator is available anyway so we might as well point it out.)

> Although the window furniture is probably reasonably familir looking to
> most people, it might be worth
> a) adding a balloon help to the scrollbar widgets
> b) adding a text morph of some variety tellng people to move the mouse
> around and let it linger on the icons to find out what they do. That
> should at least let people know how to open up the other windows!

I think it may be a bit late to include this stuff with 3.4, unless someone comes up with ready-made content.  Actually, I'm not sure these two items are really necessary anyway.  The "lingering" type of balloon help in Squeak is pretty common in other UIs, and I might argue that scrollbar widgets are so universally recognized these days that adding balloon help there is akin to engraving instructions on a doorknob. ;-)  (I don't think Apple provides balloon help for its scrollbars any longer, for example.)

> Other options I can imagine capable morphers producing
> 
> a scrolling text morph with a highlights of squeak message
> a tabbed notebook with pages for each topic
> a project with lots of explanatory bits and animations, labelled 'Press
> here for beginners help' in large friendly letters.

This stuff would also be good for a future release, if someone wants to work on this.

So in summary, I think we should make the Welcome window changes above for the 3.4 release.

- Doug
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Doug Way <[email protected]> wrote:
[A lot of well thought out stuff]

I agree to all said. Sounds good. By the way, how is Andreas and the
Croquet guys doing? Are there lots of work being done there that is
essentially getting forked now? I haven't seen any posts recently from
Andreas either.

regards, Göran