On 29 December 2011 18:26, Mariano Martinez Peck <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Igor Stasenko <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On 29 December 2011 15:44, Benoit St-Jean <[email protected]> wrote: >> > I was wondering what is planned regarding packages available on >> > SqueakSource >> > and Pharo. More and more packages can't load in Pharo and it gets more >> > and >> > more frustrating not being able to load anything without having to >> > add/modify methods/classes all over the place so those packages can load >> > properly in Pharo. Are we looking at a Pharo-only kind of SqueakSource >> > in >> > the future ? >> > >> > Besides, having to handle platform specific (i.e. Pharo vs Squeak) for >> > every >> > package is adding more complexity than what is needed. I know backward >> > compatibility was thrown away from the start to avoid compromises in >> > Pharo >> > but how do we take care of the fact that as each day passes, less and >> > less >> > stuff from SqueakSource is usable in Pharo ? >> > >> The recipe is simple: maintenance. >> >> If you really care, spend time maintaining packages you using. >> If nobody cares to maintain the software, it is dead. >> It is only a matter of time for it to get broken. >> We cannot give any guarantee that something which worked fine 10 years >> ago will keep working today, >> without keeping everything unchanged. >> >> If you have a garden and planted a rose there, do you expect that 5 >> years later it will still grow there, without you taking care of it? > > > > Igor, I think he is not criticizing that. What he points out is not the lack > of maintenance but a clear way of knowing which project/packages are > expected to work or not in Pharo. If you take a random package/project from > SS there is no way to know that. Having a Pharo catalog/certified > packages/projects would help here. >
Well, it is just another side of same problem. If package maintainer wants its package to work without problems with Pharo, usually, he takes care of everything, from checking if it works with latest pharo up to mentioning where and how it can be loaded/used. And if people don't care about their stuff, it is just rots and dies. Any attempts to do that externally (by people who don't maintain own projects directly) are futile and counterproductive. Because it is fine, you can spend couple of hours verifying that some software works ok today, "certify" it and list it in some "catalogue". But then tomorrow something will be changed and again package will be broken/stop working properly. So unless you maintaining your software continuously, there's no other way to guarantee that it works and will keep working in future. Remember the SqueakMap and Universe? They meant to solve same problem. But you cannot solve it automatically, because putting a package into list of certified packages does not guarantees that if today it works, it will keep working tomorrow. I seen numerous complaints about that in Universe, when people were really annoyed that package is listed in it, but cannot be loaded and so on. As a result, nobody using Universe today. > Cheers -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.
