Re: identifying existing apps to package

On Wednesday, February 12, 2003, at 09:58 PM, Ned Konz wrote:

> I'd like to start the packaging process for parts of the 3.5 image, as
> planned.

Great idea.  There's no reason to wait around for the 3.4 release or 
anything else before getting going on this. :-)

> I know Daniel and others have written tools for static analysis; I was
> hoping someone could come up with a good way to actually discover the
> contents of the different packages (strongly coupled clusters of
> otherwise independent classes along with class extensions that they
> use or that refer to them). Plus, I'd like to get the names of the
> major writers of the existing code.
>
> Ideally, this is something that we'd apply to an image that has as
> many change sets in it as possible (to get the historical version
> information). So if someone has (say) a 2.8 image that they've
> updated all the way to 3.5a, it would be the ideal test case.

I tried creating a similar "jumbo-changes" image awhile ago... at a 
certain point, you reach the size limit on the .changes file.  I think 
I tried to update a 2.6 image up to 3.1alpha, and it hit the limit 
before it made it.  But 2.8 to 3.1alpha was fine.  Actually, crossing 
from 2.x to 3.x is part of the problem, because the 2.8 .changes file 
is somewhat large, but then it starts empty again at 3.0.  (Although 
perhaps you could condenseChanges in 2.8, I don't think I tried that.)

In any case, I'm sure that a 3.0 image updated to 3.5a would definitely 
work.  I don't have one handy, though.  But you could start updating 
one and babysit it for awhile while doing something else. :-)

> I'd like to come up with a table in HTML that lists:
> * Category
> * Class names
> * Major authors
> * Last period (quarter year?) in which substantial changes were made
> * Outside dependencies
>
> And I'd like to do this automatically, if possible.
>
> Then we can start signing up volunteers to pick these apart.

Yes.  There's also this page at:  
http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/squeakfoundation/77  (which you 
probably already know about)  Actually, we should make sure this page 
stays up to date, too... for example, the IRCConnection refactoring is 
already in the image, I believe, so it should say "integrated"; it 
could now be removed.

> Once we have tools and HOWTO manuals on package stripping, we should
> be able to get more volunteers.
>
> Some relatively easy targets that I can see:
>
> * Speech
> * Fabrik
> * Games
> * Piano Roll
> * Process Browser
> * Archive Viewer
> * eToy communications and Nebraska
> * Scamper
> * VM Construction
>
> Harder ones:
>
> * Genie
> * Active Books
> * eToys
> * Browsers
> * File List
> * MVC
> * Morphic
>
> Any ideas?

My guess is that the harder ones could be post-3.5, although we 
shouldn't rule anything out yet.   This will depend on the release 
schedule and what other content will be in 3.5.

- Doug Way