Begin forwarded message:
From: Keith Hodges <keith_hodges@yahoo.co.uk> Date: February 12, 2009 2:38:41 PM CEST To: Alexandre Bergel <alexandre@bergel.eu>, stephane ducasse <stephane.ducasse@free.fr
Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Workspace API
Alexandre Bergel wrote:
Hi Keith,
I am close enough to Stef to affirm you that he respects your work and he is really willing to have a look at your code. As I do. I said that I would look at your SUnit extension a long while ago. However Stef and I are extremely busy. We are leading a group of 8 people, which suck up all our time. Really.
Regards, Alexandre Why do you need to look at my code? I am not speaking up because you are not gathering up my meagre useless coding crumbs.
The argument is not about code its about perspective and philosophy.
MC1.5 is a loadable tool it either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't then the way forward is to consider contributing to the MC1.5 effort to make it work. That is the philosophy choice, inclusive or exclusive.
Will you make the philosophy choice to treat MC as a community project or your project, which is it to be? That choice takes no time at all to make. You make the choice and then you can put your time and effort into working with the consequences.
I am concerned because your philosophy leads you to continue to fork stuff that doesn't need to be forked and should not be forked for the good of the community.
Another trivial example: Workspace is another tool, it could be loadable, it need not be part of the kernel. Variants of Workspace could be available. Whatever is done it could be loadable and work in all images. There is no reason at all why my old production image that is still in 3.8 cant load a newer implementation of Workspace (since ScriptManager loads successfully)
SUnit is a loadable framework it is something that should be managed as a resource for everyone. Why does the pharo team insist on controlling it and forking. I am not asking you to "look at my code" in SUnit. In fact I doubt that the filters are actually working at the moment. Some of my code in SUnit was really rubbish until recent improvements.
I am asking you to adopt a philosophy of seeing MC/SUnit/Workspace/Compiler/Collections etc as a community resource, with a repository squeaksource/Testing that the community maintains. Not something that pharo does its own thing on.
If you dont, then I cant write a package that loads into Squeak and Pharo (because MC wont necessarily be compatible) or Tests run in squeak and Pharo (because SUnit will be incompatible). Why don't you see this level of compatibility as important?
So again I am not complaining about the fact that you haven't looked at this or that bit of code. Your response of "we havent had time to look at that " winds me up, because I hear it as "we havent had time to audit your potentially inferior code that might be below us to use." and that very attitude misses the point completely.
All of Stef objections, demonstrate that this is how he sees it.
I am complaining that you see the issue as a bunch of "potentially inferior" code contributions to your cause, rather than "we have something to contribute to the community of SUnit and MC users, because MC and SUnit are frameworks that everyone uses and depends on."
regards
Keith