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

Sun Dec 24 10:22:11 PST 2023

Oh! About what @Hilaire Fernandes <hfern at free.fr> mentioned: maybe we can
detect the user's OS and provide a download link matching that?
I've seen that work on many websites.

Best,
Nico PM

On Sun, Dec 24, 2023 at 3:20 PM Nicolás Papagna Maldonado <
nicolas.papagna at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi folks!
>
> I didn't have the chance to test this yet.
> I have one question: will this distribution log things to the all-in-one
> folder?
>
> I believe this is important for newcomers, in case they find any issues
> and need to send those to the mailing list.
>
> Cheers,
> Nico PM
>
> On Sun, Dec 24, 2023 at 3:03 PM Hilaire Fernandes via Cuis-dev <
> cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:
>
>> 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. Geohttp://gnu.org/s/dr-geo/http://gnu-drgeo.blogspot.com/
>>
>> --
>> Cuis-dev mailing list
>> Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st
>> https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev
>>
>
>
> --
>
> Nicolás Papagna
>

-- 

Nicolás Papagna
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