Thanks Marcus - and definitely we all appreciate that its holiday season and that a lot of this is driven by community and people donating their free time. I’m still a bit unclear on the moving parts. To paraphrase what you have said: We start each yearly cycle with a X.0 new release. Then there may be point releases 6.1, 6.2 etc where there is a breaking change (typically a new VM I guess - but is there anything else that would cause a .x release?). Then there are “hot fixes” that causes an image number change (these have worked there way through the CI, as it triggered a new build)? The implication is then that what I download from Pharo.org <http://pharo.org/> is the last point release, but then I can go and find a newer image “hot fix” if I want some of the latest more minor fixes (and I guess this then answers m .x question above - as I guess that if there was a major bug in the image it might also trigger a new point release so that new users would get that fix when downloading from pharo.org <http://pharo.org/>?) So a reasonably active Pharo user (but not a more bleeding edge new release user) should typically download the latest image every month to stay current? We should encourage more seasoned users to also try a leading edge point release, and apply the latest hot fix image particularly in the latter part of year when we are trying to stabilise for the next release cycle. And then there are the instructions about taking the next leap for contributing back… Is this right? Tim

On 18 Aug 2017, at 08:56, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> wrote:

...

What I think would have been good is to list all the updates that where done between releasing 6.0 and 6.1 *as part of the changelog* of 6.1 (even though they were already in the image that you got a minute before Pharo6.1 was released, as they where released as hot fixes before).

The changelog of things done between releasing 6.0 and the release of 6.1:

20262 Update Iceberg to 0.5.4 https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20262

20268 update iceberg v0.5.5 https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20268

20226 TabMorph should use stepping mechanism for animating background building https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20226

20238 Run out of memory the image hangs without out of memory warning https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20238

20218 Master branch (Pharo 6) needs to be safely merged into development branch (Pharo 7). https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20218

20187 Request use of block in certain methods https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20187

20188 Request representation of integer literal without float exponent https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20188

20182 Extra dot in literal array https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20182

18760 Failing test: WeakAnnouncerTest>>#testNoDeadWeakSubscriptions https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/18760

20186 Request removal of extra statement separators (dot) https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20186

20185 Request pipe after block argments https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20185

20183 TraitDescription>>fileOutLocalMethodsInCategory:on: method temp var name overlap https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20183

20184 Request space between argument and selector in StdioStream>>next: https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20184

20167 Regression with PNGReaderWriter in P6 https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20167

20198 inner structure access does not work on multiple architecture https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20198

20110 AllocationTest>>#testOutOfMemorySignal not well suited to 64-bit https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20110

20096 Add script pragma to SpaceTally>>printSpaceAnalysis https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20096

20174 In the debug halo of a morph: clicking on "inspect morph" and "explore morph" bring up the same window. https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20174

20093 Missing source stamp makes changes hard to view https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20093

20148 transforming deprecations should take #showWarning into account https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20148

20146 ZnHTTPSTests>>#testGetPharoVersion started to fail https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20146

If you don’t mind - let me try a second attempt at paraphrasing what you are saying (just to make sure I’m clear, but it might help others too). We start each yearly cycle with an X0 new release (our current release is 6). Then there may be point releases 6.1, 6.2 etc where there is a breaking change (typically a new VM. Our last point release was 6.1). Thought the year (typically every few days) there are “hot fixes” that causes an image number change (these have worked there way through the CI, and have triggered a new artefect). These images can be found at http://files.pharo.org/image/60/ <http://files.pharo.org/image/60/> (where 60 designates the last release cycle, we don’t use point designations for this directory name). When you download the latest point release, you are getting all the major elements of that release plus any of the hot fixes that have occurred since that official release. So you have the most up to date version of a stable Pharo at the time that you download this file from: http://pharo.org/download <http://pharo.org/download> The implication of the above, is that if you want to revert to exactly what was present in the launch of an official point release, you will need to download the latest release from Pharo.org <http://pharo.org/> and then find the image number that corresponded to that release at http://files.pharo.org/image/60/ <http://files.pharo.org/image/60/> (is there an easy way to determine this and then find that file? Or is there an official archive of the first point release?). If you want to say up to date, you should periodically download the latest point release (or you can simply find that latest named image file from: http://files.pharo.org/image/60/ <http://files.pharo.org/image/60/> and use your current VM). If the above is the case - it seems like a reasonable way of operating, although it might be good to know what the exact image number was in the first issued point release (just for traceability). Have I now got it straight now? Tim

On 18 Aug 2017, at 13:53, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> wrote:

...

On 18 Aug 2017, at 13:08, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote:

Thanks Marcus - and definitely we all appreciate that its holiday season and that a lot of this is driven by community and people donating their free time.

I’m still a bit unclear on the moving parts. To paraphrase what you have said:

We start each yearly cycle with a X.0 new release. Then there may be point releases 6.1, 6.2 etc where there is a breaking change (typically a new VM I guess - but is there anything else that would cause a .x release?).

Then there are “hot fixes” that causes an image number change (these have worked there way through the CI, as it triggered a new build)? The implication is then that what I download from Pharo.org <http://pharo.org/> is the last point release,

No, the download is always the latest (with all accepted fixes integrated).

...

but then I can go and find a newer image “hot fix” if I want some of the latest more minor fixes (and I guess this then answers m .x question above - as I guess that if there was a major bug in the image it might also trigger a new point release so that new users would get that fix when downloading from pharo.org <http://pharo.org/>?)

The problem is that doing a release 6.1 takes half a day of work. We could improve that, but then with Pharo7 all this changed anyway, so we will not improve this process. (and not do many releases of this kind for Pharo6).

...

So a reasonably active Pharo user (but not a more bleeding edge new release user) should typically download the latest image every month to stay current?

Normally you have a CI that builds from the latest pharo image + the latest commit from your repo and you start with that all couple of days/weeks (This is important to make sure that you have a reproduce build, too).

...

We should encourage more seasoned users to also try a leading edge point release, and apply the latest hot fix image particularly in the latter part of year when we are trying to stabilise for the next release cycle. And then there are the instructions about taking the next leap for contributing back…

Is this right?

Not really. *all* fixes that go into the stable release go into the development release, too. So the releases of stable Pharo6 have not much todo with Pharo7, no need to run a special Pharo6 when we stabilize Pharo7. Here it is important that people use Pharo7.

Keep in mind that we try to do active development only in the development branch, so we talk about 20-30 fixes in total, many many are not really that important or are just important for those who ran into them.

So we should not be too complex about it… it worked fine like this the last years.

Marcus

Normally you have a CI that builds from the latest pharo image + the latest commit from your repo and you start with that all couple of days/weeks (This is important to make sure that you have a reproduce build, too).

This is expected for production code, but maybe not the workflow for everyone (e.g. hobbyists or people exploring datasets.) On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 10:36 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> wrote:

On 18 Aug 2017, at 15:41, Tim Mackinnon <tim@testit.works> wrote:

If you don’t mind - let me try a second attempt at paraphrasing what you are saying (just to make sure I’m clear, but it might help others too).

We start each yearly cycle with an X0 new release (our current release is 6). Then there may be point releases 6.1, 6.2 etc where there is a breaking change (typically a new VM. Our last point release was 6.1).

Thought the year (typically every few days) there are “hot fixes” that causes an image number change (these have worked there way through the CI, and have triggered a new artefect). These images can be found at http://files.pharo.org/image/60/ (where 60 designates the last release cycle, we don’t use point designations for this directory name).

When you download the latest point release, you are getting all the major elements of that release plus any of the hot fixes that have occurred since that official release. *So you have the most up to date version of a stable Pharo at the time that you download this file from: * http://pharo.org/download

yes

The implication of the above, is that if you want to revert to exactly what was present in the launch of an official point release, you will need to download the latest release from Pharo.org <http://pharo.org/> and then find the image number that corresponded to that release at http://files.pharo.org/image/60/ (is there an easy way to determine this and then find that file? Or is there an official archive of the first point release?).

If you want to say up to date, you should periodically download the latest point release (or you can simply find that latest named image file from: http://files.pharo.org/image/60/ and use your current VM).

If the above is the case - it seems like a reasonable way of operating, although it might be good to know what the exact image number was in the first issued point release (just for traceability).

Have I now got it straight now?

Yes. And maybe it is not good… maybe it would be better to accumulate the changes between the point release without changing the download and have the version numbers more prominent in the downloaded files (so that it is easy to find old versions, too).

For major.minor.hotfix versioning, maybe the hotfixes that pass CI could accumulate in a list that is loaded similar to the old System > Software Update method, so hotfixes are available without without having to throw away an image - i.e. a new download is only required for a "major.minor" update. A user might individually select a hotfix, but the default list gives a standard order to load them. Each change to that default list is essentially a ".hotfix" point release. This may provide the mechanism to provide more longevity of Pharo versions. As part of their CI, anyone can download the major.minor release and then the default hotfix list (or their own list). Older Pharo versions would tend to become more community-supported. cheers -ben

On 18 Aug 2017, at 09:56, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr> wrote:

...

What I think would have been good is to list all the updates that where done between releasing 6.0 and 6.1 *as part of the changelog* of 6.1 (even though they were already in the image that you got a minute before Pharo6.1 was released, as they where released as hot fixes before).

The changelog of things done between releasing 6.0 and the release of 6.1:

I added a link to the complete changeling to http://pharo.org/news/pharo6.1-released <http://pharo.org/news/pharo6.1-released> Marcus