Hi!

Ralph Johnson wrote:
> One of the "big ideas" of Package Universe is that a universe is only 
> for one version of the image.  In other words, there was a PU for 3.9 
> and one for 3.11.  If you are going to use PU in 4.1 then you will have 
> to set up a universe for it.  
> 
> The nice thing about thie idea is that within a universe, you can pretty 
> much expect all the packages to work together.  You con't have to search 
> for the right version to load.  You just say which packages you want, 
> and the system will load all the prerequisite packages, and get the 
> right version of each.

Yes, and my idea for "marrying" PU and SM was simply to create a new 
kind of "package" in SM which is a "Universe". Because if we disregard 
the tooling/UI etc - a Universe could be equal to a list of SM package 
releases that work fine in a given image. Simple as that.

Now, sure, we still need some rudimentary dependency mechanism - but I 
still am convinced that the above would work fine. Since SM allows 
assigning people as co-maintainers etc, a small group of people could 
maintain such a "list" together, and it would of course be independent 
of other such Universes etc.

The BIG upside of this is that the actual releases and packages are 
maintained ONCE, and not in two redundant places (SM and PU).

> The downside, of course, is that people have to keep making new PUs for 
> each release.  PU is easier for the users than SM, but more work for 
> developers.

Indeed. Also, SM does have a mechanism to categorize releases for a 
specific Squeak image - but it was not used that much. So depending on 
people to do "the right thing" is ... a risky thing :)

regards, Göran