Hi Mariano, I also agree with you. Cheers, Doru On 4 Jan 2010, at 09:24, Mariano Martinez Peck wrote:
Please, don't say "NOOOOO!" immediately. Read the mail carefully, take a deep breath and think cold.
After working a couple of weeks in the Metacello configurations and now with Damien's scripts to build Dev and Web images, I came to the question: Do we really need a PharoWeb image?
I will give just my opinions of why having PharoWeb images is not a good idea anymore
1) First of all, I don't like the PharoWeb name. Because it is not Web in general, it is seaside. So, in my opinion, a better name would be PharoSeaside. Maybe even new comers may think that the only alternative is seaside. You know I have nothing against Seaside and that I even use it several times. I would like to see AidaWeb images based in Pharo too.
2) Why to still have PharoWeb images if now Seaside images (at least the one click) are based in seaside ? In addition, when I develop in Seaside, I use Seaside images, not PharoWeb, and I think most people do the same.
3) Seaside images (or Lukas images for seaside) are MUCH more stable than the PharoWeb images. Why? Several reasons: 3.a) THEY know the dependencies of the packages, the versions, how to set up, the order of load, etc, NOT us. THEY are the experts in seaside, not us. 3.b) THEY really test their images before make then public. 3.c) We are "force" to release one release per month which has no sense. How says that Seaside is released once a month? That's bad because it means we are usually taking unstable versions. THEY know when a release should be done and when a release is stable or not.
4) Now I created all the Metacello configurations for the PharoDev image and I took me a lot of time. Because I am not the developer of any of those projects. So, I need to understand the dependencies, the order, the versions, etc. But why ??? If Seaside people have already done that, don't duplicate efforts.
5) The instability of PharoWeb images give to our public a bad impression. We waste all of out efforts of Pharo in that image.
6) The idea of Pharo is to be the vehicle. And that's exactly the Pharo role in the Seaside images. We don't need to build PharoWeb images. Even more, do we build PharoGlass images ? NOOOO. Why not ? Because Dale already prepare them and as HE knows much more about Glass than us, his images are better for Glass.
7) Tracking and managing issues always take time. Even analyzing a bug, say "we won't fix" and close it. With PharoWeb images we are having those kind of issues.
8) Our resources are limited. Why not to use them in more important stuff ? For example, building a better and more robust Dev image?
Here is my proposal:
1) Completely remove the idea of PharoWeb image. Remove the links from the website and do not create Web images any more. 2) In http://www.pharo-project.org/pharo-download add a description explaining that now Seaside images are based in Pharo, so you can directly download that image. We can even explain a bit about seaside, and even if you want you can put a href called "PharoWeb" which links to the seaside image. However, I would rather call it "PharoSeaside". 3) Tomorrow we can have AidaWeb images based in pharo (please Janko!!) so we can just do the same and put the link to those images. 4) You may notice that Seaside images are a bit "different" than our Dev images. This is mostly due to the preferences, the theme and maybe some tools (ECompeltion instead of OCompletion, etc..). So, what I suggest is to prepare a little script that can be downloadable and those people who want a Seaside image but more "similar" to our Dev images, just run that script.
So...what do you think? I would really like to hear your opinion about this.
Cheers
Mariano
_______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
-- www.tudorgirba.com "What is more important: To be happy, or to make happy?"