[Cuis-dev] [Important] Additional packages for Stable (LTS) releases (was Re: Re : Re: Beta for Cuis 7.0 stable, Rolling Release is 7.1)

[Hilaire Fernandes]

Hi,

I think we need some clarification and facing reality on what can be done.

Regarding a given Cuis stable release and a given package, being part of 
Cuis-Smalltalk organisation or not, I think about two different aspects 
of the package:

1. being compatible, known to work, with the given Cuis stable release

2. being maintained for this given Cuis stable release, its code will 
evolve within this branch, I guess this is what you call LTS

I have absolutely zero resource to do #2, like maintaining LTS for 
Cuis-Smalltalk-UI for example . I have difficulty to find free time to 
work on DrGeo or Dynabook.

Discussion continue below.

Le 21/05/2024 à 15:25, Juan Vuletich a écrit :
>
> But I think it is more important to find out which '3rd party' 
> packages we want (and are able to!) support for a stable release. 
> Stable releases are meant to be high quality, and users expect them to 
> work for a long time. They are "LTS" releases (Long Term Support). We 
> can only include packages we know are in good shape, and someone has 
> committed to provide support for them as part of the stable release. 
> We haven't been explicit about this before, basically because I'll be 
> doing that for the packages in the Cuis7-0 repository. But I can't do 
> that for packages I don't use and don't know too much about how they 
> work.

Sure you can't and you shouldn't do that.

A maintainers of a package should decide if they want to inform about #1 
and/or volunteer to #2 or none, in this later case package only evolve 
with -dev version.

I have no idea how this should be done but a common rule, description 
how to do it will be useful to both maintainer and user of any given 
package for Cuis. I guess you wan to rely on git capability.


>
> The next step needs to be to identify those packages. I know, (this is 
> just an example), that GeographicInformationSystems is cool. But I 
> haven't used it in quite some time. So unless someone else has, it 
> doesn't qualify as "well maintained and routinely used". Obviously, if 
> there is some project actually using it, the situation is completely 
> different. So we need that list of packages to work on.

Even if not used, such package could be tagged to be known to work, or 
may be just load ?


>
> I took a not-too-old DrGeo image I had on my machine, and looked at 
> the packages it has loaded. Hilaire please correct me if this is wrong 
> or incomplete. Some of these packages are already in the Cuis7-0 repo. 
> Others are specific to DrGeo. I'm not listing any of them in what 
> follows.
>
> Many packages are in other (3rd party) repos in the Cuis-Smalltalk 
> organization. So, these are the repos / packages we need to work on:
> - Numerics / 'LinearAlgebra'
> - SVG / 'SVG'
> - Parsers / 'PetitParser'
> - Erudite /
>     'PetitParserBinding'
>     'Erudite'
> - Cuis-Smalltalk-UI /
>     'UI-Click-Select'
>     'UI-Core'
>     'UI-Entry'
>     'UI-Panel'
>     'UI-Preference'
>     'UI-Widgets'
>
> I'll support Numerics / 'LinearAlgebra' and SVG / 'SVG' under the repo 
> structure we decide for "3rd party packages for Cuis Stable Releases". 
> I think they are mature and stable, and haven't had issues in a long 
> time.
>
> So, Hilaire and Ken, do you think that the Cuis-Smalltalk-UI packages 
> are stable enough to be in a stable release with long term support? If 
> needed, will you give support for them, not only for the current 
> Rolling Release, but also for Stable Releases? These will be different 
> package files, and most likely on separate repos.

As I wrote I can't do #2 on these packages.

>
> I apologize for asking bluntly, but we need to be confident, before 
> stamping "LongTermSupport'd" on any packages.

I think an intermediate status as "known to work" with will be more 
realistic.

Hilaire

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