Is Bob/Sake project meanwhile with public access? Are you back in
Bob/Sake business?
Sake has always been public access.
VMMaker is at a far lower level than Seaside or other things
Metacello is being used for.
Yes, like FFI, ExternalWebBrowsers, SQLite3 or others which
are available via configurations. You may say it is overkill for
such small projects - but you can construct more complex configs
(like Seaside) from that.
... You can put scripts into InstallerScripts to be loaded using ...
I know all this - but
a) I want something that works on Squeak, Pharo, Gemstone, maybe other ST's later
(since I use Seaside)
Well I cant help you there. But it would not be rocket science to port Installer, or sake because they were designed to be minimal. They were designed to be portable to other platforms as an enabling technology.
Metacello only does one thing, whereas Sake is as general as make in theory.
b) I want to maintain versions in one file (here in one class)
not in separate scripts for each version. I can use Monticello diffs to
see how the config has changed, ...
This is a design flaw of Metacello, when you have mechanisms like inheritance,
maintaining one definition for all contexts doesn't work. I have tried it.
c) I want a declarative description instead of code since I may
use it for other purposes too (deployment and dependency tools, ...)
I could comment on the rest of your post, I basically disagree with
pretty much everything you say.
No problem for me ... you dont have to use it.
It doesnt change anything on VMMaker or prevents you from using
other loaders/installers.
Can Metacello publish and use definitions on a web page or wiki, can
it load from squeakmap, or universes, can it access published bug
fixes, can you override with your own local definitions, can it
bootstrap from the source.st code inside a monticello package.
Again: Metacello does not care about SqueakMap, Universe, Mantis
since it is not bound to Squeak. You compare apples with oranges.
Lets play a short game:
You will find ConfigurationOfMetaSource in the MetaSource project on SqS,
that is able to load a whole seaside app right from a core image
and keep it maintained with new versions.
Sake/Packages does all that.
(Package named: 'Seaside') latest load.
Show me that Installer/Sake/Bob is doing better here and is aligned
with the goals in a) b) and c)
Sake uses fully declarative desriptions.