Excellent write-up, Esteban, this was very useful. I want to add my 'thank you' to everyone in the Pharo community for making all this possible.
> On 29 Dec 2014, at 13:59, Esteban Lorenzano <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello Pharoers, > > (sorry for the long post) > > I'm on holidays so I've been silent this latests days, but I didn't want to > let the opportunity goes to propose a toast :) > This year has been a great year (yeah, but not like those annoying facebook > cards), one year where we have worked itensively in the patient consolidation > of several lines of work. > This has been possible thanks to the great improvement that we have made in > the Pharo process itself, which required (and still requires) a massive > amount of effort: Since I arrived here (but not necessarily *because* I > arrived here: this is the work of everyone in Pharo community, I'm just > pointing to what I've seen and collaborated :P), we have changed a lot of > things: > > - we have deployed a solid CI infrastructure that can handle our integration > cycle without too much complications. Even if we still find problems time to > time, this has been an incredible step forward. > - thanks to this we have been able to change our release cycle from "it > happens when we believe is ready" to time-boxed releases, so we have created > Pharo 1.4, 2.0 and this year what, for me, is one of the most complete and > cool releases (up to now) that we have produced: Pharo 3.0. > - We have increased massively the amount of tests in the system (no sure what > is the percentage, but is high), so we have been able to change core parts in > the system without causing too much pain to developers (yeah, we know there > have been some errors some times, but well... "errare humanum est", and I > think we have learned from the process and now we do not make same > mistakes... in any case they are new mistakes :P). > - We have made huge steps in the "Pharo modularisation project", thanks to > the Pharo-minimal images and work we have started to move all into a > repeatable configuration (thanks to metacello and tools developed for this). > - We have also incorporated the VM building to this process and testing > cycle, so is a lot easier for everyone to build their own VM (if needed), and > for us we can be sure (as sure as possible at least) VM is in good shape. > - We have improved documentation and release new books. People have working a > lot in a lot of cool and instructive videos that have moved our "learning > curve" several steps ahead. > > And this is just one part of the "invisible, ant work of everyday", in the > visible part, I will not bore (more than needed :P) with details about > previous releases, so I will just point some of the great things we have made > for the upcoming release, Pharo 4: > > - Thanks to GTools, we are slowly going to a better set of tools, with new > ways of see/handle old things. This is the most visible change this year (and > it has caused the most flamed wars, but well... we are a passionate > community). This release we have a new inspector, playground and spotter > (god, spotter is sooooo cool!), next release we hope to integrate a new > debugger and if planets align, a new Coder. > - We introduced OSWindow as a preview, a tool which will allow us to do a lot > of years waited features: start UI from image instead from VM (transmiting to > the used the decision of having one or not), multi-windows, a vectorial UI > instead the good-but-old bitblt we have now. > - We enhanced Athens and introduced the new TxModel. We still do now achieve > our objective of migrate our morphic drawing mechanism to athens, but this is > a lot of work and will take some time. > - We have improved a lot the development cycle with the introduction of smart > suggestions, the upcoming smart breakpoins and reflectivity. > - And of course, we have worked a lot in the cleaning of the system (an > invisible and ungrateful work, believe me) > > And this is just a glimpse, what I wrote this morning before breakfast, > wanting to thank all of you to let me be part of this super cool community, > and wanting to have a toast with you: > > For a 2015 with more stories, more adventures, more Pharo! > > Esteban > >
