Keith Hodges wrote:
Adrian Lienhard wrote:
Hi,
I really think we need a package management system and a process to maintain it.
The goal is that loading and using non-core packages "just works" Same goal as for Sake/Packages, and it works for me.
(unlike for instance SqueakMap, where loading more often fails than succeeds because there are a lot of obsolete packages and a dependency mechanism is missing).
- There should be a responsible maintainer for each package
Not a realistic proposition. Better to be open to all to maintain on behalf of the community.
- For each package there should be a known way to discuss and report problems
That's just arbitrary metadata in the package definition, for more general topics we use the packages@squeakfoundation.org mailing list
- A gate keeper includes and removes packages from the set depending on their status
Probably too complicated to be practical.
This limits the set of included packages (at least initially) but would increase the quality and hence the user experience.
Maybe there could be two sets, a stable and an unstable set. New
Sake/Packages supports a stable and a beta release of each package.
packages would first go to the unstable set and then move up to the stable set after a while.
An automated build process could load packages into new builds and report the result of the tests.
Bob does that.
The package management system does not need to be very sophisticated,
Sake is as simple as possible for defining actions with dependencies.
but it should manage dependencies and have a simple GUI (to search for packages and see what is already loaded).
Sake/Packages uses the class browser as is, no extra GUI is required.
Packages provided explore shows you what is loaded, and this should be merged into PackageOrganization. Keith