[Cuis-dev] [Ann] First sketch of Cuis 6.1 release - Please REVIEW and TEST!

[Hilaire Fernandes]

Hi Juan & al,

I am just catching up.

This is always a good idea to ease the start-up experience to new 
Cuis-Smalltalk users. I am sure it will have important impact. I tested 
on Ubuntu 23.10, it  works smoothly.

Regarding all-in-one application, I have been using it a lot in the past 
with Dr. Geo, then at some point stopped using it. I stopped for 
technical reasons, but then I realized there were also end user reasons 
to stop using it.

Indeed, it adds complexity that does not serve the end user. For 
example, a Linux user will see VM, scripts for the Windows user. Will 
this Linux user uses this same folder structure to execute Cuis on a 
Windows machine? No, because he's using Linux. Then it does not scale 
very well. Will you add VM for Linux on Arm, on RiscV? Then we can argue 
the same with image, why both 64bits and 32bits, the end user will only 
use one variant of it.

The truth about all-in-one application is it makes the life easier for 
the developers and people deploying end-user applications, like me with 
DrGeo. You just need to upload one package and that's it. In a such 
momentum, we should realize it is not a good sign, we are not serving 
the end-user first, but ourself.

What will be make life easier for end user is an archive to download 
containing the VM and the image it needs. That's it.

I will use your CuisExperiment as a base to automate the building of 
Cuis-Smalltalk distributions with various combination of VM binary and 
image (32|64 bits). You will have MacIntel, MacARM, Windows, LinuxIntel, 
LinuxArm, LinuxRiscV associated with appropriate image and VM. Does not 
Github offer service to automate packages built? I have just migrated 
DrGeo repository to Github, I will take a look to that 
(https://github.com/hilaire/drgeo).

Then you will have a set up that could scale more easily to any 
additional needs like embedded system. And you will be free to arrange 
the distribution in a way that fit the host (Mac is a bit special)

I feel it could also add visibility to Cuis-Smalltalk to have these 
different distributions, it will talk more specifically to the end user 
and will have a wow effect. Compare all-in-one and LinuxIntel64 names. 
The later one is crystal clear, not the former one.

Regarding the current folder structure, I will try to hide the 
complexity a bit more. I will have only two top level folders. To 
illustrate, this is what a Linux user sees when entering the DrGeo app 
folder:

DrGeo
├── ChangeLog
├── DrGeo.sh
├── License.txt
├── README
├── Resources
├── transcript.txt
└── VM

Even the VM should not be visible to be honest. It should be moved in 
the Resources folder.

Nevertheless, all-in-one distribution will be already an important 
progress and of course my opinion can be completely discarded without harm.

Have a nice day.

Hilaire

Le 24/12/2023 à 13:28, Juan Vuletich via Cuis-dev a écrit :
>
> The upcoming 6.1 release will be the first of a new series of 
> releases. We'll be doing a "stable release" that will later only 
> include critical fixes, every six months. This will be done in 
> addition to our usual rolling release, and it will follow the RedHat 
> Linux release process.
>
> The stable releases are intended for:
> - People who don't want to deal with constant updates and breakage, 
> and prefer to port their code to a new system from time to time.
> - Building End User Applications.
> - Casual users, who just want to take a look at Cuis.
> - People new to Smalltalk.
> - Students who will be using Smalltalk for a semester.
>
> For many of these use cases, I want to include only consistently high 
> quality code. So every package included needs to be currently in use, 
> tested, well maintained, etc. We'll need to work out a way to deal 
> with additional packages, from Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev repo, other repos 
> from Cuis-Smalltalk organization, and other repos outside of it. This 
> is just an initial version. It will grow.
>
> Thanks, 

-- 
GNU Dr. Geo
http://gnu.org/s/dr-geo/
http://gnu-drgeo.blogspot.com/
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