On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 10:40 PM, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com> wrote:
Ben Coman wrote
Would it be feasible to have a community maintained PharoForwardCompatability package available in the ConfigurationBrowser that is generally available for everyone to use
Great idea! If we're just talking about renames, it could just be pre-loaded, no?
Ideally these sort of renames would be pushed back to all previous Releases, but that seems not feasible resource-wise. Its a question of ALL actions required do a point-release of those older versions, and how often you are able to do that. There is also the temptation that with a point-Release, people will pressure to add "just one more" thing that might not be a "simple rename" . An additional benefit of it being a Configuration loaded external onto the older Releases is that people can see the changes, which is a big tip for which parts of their code the should update for it to work in a later version. Also because people using the package can see the "simple" changes, there doesn't need to be as much rigor adding stuff to it - so it can be more community driven. Also its more dynamic - for example if this change is made early in Pharo 5, the Pharo 4 projects can already include it and be already adapting. Because you want to minimise the point releases of the older versions, you would otherwise need to wait a whole year for the Pharo 5 Release to lock down all required "renames" to back propagate. cheers -ben