4.2 wish list

4.1 was one of those great Squeak releases where there were
significant infrastructural improvements.  I would like 4.2 to push
even further toward the dream of a free, industrial-grade Smalltalk
engine.  A Smalltalk in which the tools a Smalltalk developer expects
to work, work, and work well.  But we still have a gap to fill:

  - Refactoring
  - Profiling
  - Efficient finalization and weak-collections

As great as 4.1 is, none of these tools are acceptably usable in 4.1,
but I have hope for them for 4.2.  There has been some recent
discussion around wrapping some ToolBuilder views around the RB
engine.  Andreas _seemed_ to indicate the profiling issue is not
seriously difficult to fix and, finally, I have been working with Igor
on his finalization and weak-collection fixes that I will report on
soon.

I'm also very excited about the recent interest in SqueakMap; that it
could potentially be freshened and become a "go-to" place for easy,
convenient in-image software exploration, accompanied by
documentation.  And, the current HelpSystem documentation effort is
just the icing on the cake.

In summary, a free, industrial-grade Smalltalk engine, advanced
developer tools, documention and loaded with cool working demos.  This
is my dream for what I would think would make a fantastic 4.2 release,
what do you think?

+1



----- Original Message ----
From: Chris Muller <[hidden email]>
To: squeak dev <[hidden email]>
Sent: Fri, May 14, 2010 1:35:43 PM
Subject: [squeak-dev] 4.2 wish list

4.1 was one of those great Squeak releases where there were
significant infrastructural improvements.  I would like 4.2 to push
even further toward the dream of a free, industrial-grade Smalltalk
engine.  A Smalltalk in which the tools a Smalltalk developer expects
to work, work, and work well.  But we still have a gap to fill:

  - Refactoring
  - Profiling
  - Efficient finalization and weak-collections

As great as 4.1 is, none of these tools are acceptably usable in 4.1,
but I have hope for them for 4.2.  There has been some recent
discussion around wrapping some ToolBuilder views around the RB
engine.  Andreas _seemed_ to indicate the profiling issue is not
seriously difficult to fix and, finally, I have been working with Igor
on his finalization and weak-collection fixes that I will report on
soon.

I'm also very excited about the recent interest in SqueakMap; that it
could potentially be freshened and become a "go-to" place for easy,
convenient in-image software exploration, accompanied by
documentation.  And, the current HelpSystem documentation effort is
just the icing on the cake.

In summary, a free, industrial-grade Smalltalk engine, advanced
developer tools, documention and loaded with cool working demos.  This
is my dream for what I would think would make a fantastic 4.2 release,
what do you think?

On 5/14/10, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:
> 4.1 was one of those great Squeak releases where there were
> significant infrastructural improvements.  I would like 4.2 to push
> even further toward the dream of a free, industrial-grade Smalltalk
> engine.  A Smalltalk in which the tools a Smalltalk developer expects
> to work, work, and work well.  But we still have a gap to fill:
>
>   - Refactoring

May be ready soon to be ticked off....

Colin Putney published a configuration which loads the OmniBrowser
with Refactoring into Squeak4.1 trunk. He asks us to try it out.

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2010-May/150710.html

The configuration file which loads it is in the Inbox
http://source.squeak.org/inbox/Configurations-cwp.1.mcz

I loaded it out today - user level testing is needed now
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2010-May/150722.html
(Contains the very short load information)

--Hannes