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

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Hilaire,

On 5/22/2024 12:04 PM, Hilaire Fernandes via Cuis-dev wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I think we need some clarification and facing reality on what can be done.
>

Ok. I like your realistic approach.

What I was suggesting (thanks Ken and Mariano for commiting your time to 
that) is more ambitious, difficult, and perhaps not needed.

> 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.
>

We can try #1. That is, right after we freeze the stable release (that 
should be done in no more than a couple of weeks), we can review 3rd 
party packages, and after some testing and quality assessing, we can tag 
their current commit as "Cuis7.0Stable ready". Maybe that is enough. We 
don't have yet enough experience to know if more than that is needed.

If we actually need to go #2, yes, we'll need to open branches on the 
affected repos.

> 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.
>

Yep.

>>
>> 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 ?
>

Yes. But I'd devote at least one hour, after Cuis7.0Stable is out, to 
check that it loads, all tests pass, and example scripts do work. Then 
we can tag it.

>>
>> 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.
>

It is OK. We'll find our way.

>>
>> 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/

Yes. Thanks Hilaire for your honest and thoughtful answer. This 
discussion is really useful!

Cheers,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
cuis.st
github.com/jvuletich
researchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletich
independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich
patents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletich
linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
twitter.com/JuanVuletich

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