[ANN] Squeak Inbox Talk - bringing squeak-dev into your image

Hi all! :-)

I'm very excited to announce a new tool to you today that aims to make the Squeak development cycle a bit easier for all of us. Introducing Squeak Inbox Talk, which allows you as Squeak contributors and maintainers to review and discuss new features for Squeak directly in your image!

Installation:
Install the latest Trunk updates first.

    	Metacello new
    	    	baseline: 'SqueakInboxTalk';
    	    	repository: 'github://hpi-swa-lab/squeak-inbox-talk:main';
    	    	load.

After the installation, in the main docking bar, choose "Squeak Inbox Talk" from the Apps menu, click Refresh, and there you go!
Alternatively, you can download a ready-to-use image here: https://github.com/hpi-swa-lab/squeak-inbox-talk/releases
In [1] you can find the open-source GitHub repository, including a project board and some theoretical background.
Your feedback is especially helpful for my research before 2021-07-19 (but still appreciated later very much).

Maybe you have already experienced at least one of the following troubles in the past:
1. Tedious navigation on the list: Where has this patch gone? Can someone remember where we were discussing this funky thing recently?
2. High entry barrier for new contributors: You need to sign up on the mailing list to follow discussions.
3. Hard review process: Notifications and discussions appear in your email client, but if you want to check out some code, you will switch to your image, of course.

In the last months, I have been trying to solve these and other issues. Now I'm inviting you to figure out whether I have been successful! Squeak Inbox Talk allows you to interact with all relevant artifacts right in Squeak, including emails as well as Monticello contributions. It comes with a free-text search and several powerful filters for aspects such as packages, review state of a contribution, and your personal involvement. These filters should make it easier to survey certain domains, gain a better understanding of the connection between inbox versions, or keep track of your own proposals.

Please give it a try and return feedback! As one possible starting point, you could search for "terminate" to recapitulate Jaromir's recent efforts on Process. I had the great opportunity to run this project in the course of a seminar at HPI, and the luck to be guided by Marcel while doing so. In a few weeks, I will present the project internally, and your thoughts and feedback will of course be very helpful for my evaluation. Needless to say, I'm also looking forward to making the tool even more convenient for you. :-)

Thank you so much in advance!

Best,
Christoph

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APPENDIX: How does it work?

Basically, Squeak Inbox Talk is implemented by reusing and assembling together the following existing solutions: Squeak History [2], a project originally developed by Marcel (mt) that scrapes and processes all mailing list conversations from the pipermail archives [3]; the SMTPClient in Squeak [5] for sending messages; and the Monticello infrastructure, which remains the heart of our development workflow. Optionally, further components such as IMAPClient [4] might follow later. On top of this, Squeak Inbox Talk adds a convenient layer for exploring and filtering conversations and contributions.

[1] https://github.com/hpi-swa-lab/squeak-inbox-talk
[2] https://github.com/hpi-swa/squeak-history
[3] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/
[4] https://github.com/hpi-swa-teaching/IMAPClient
[5] This mail was sent from Squeak Inbox Talk using the latest version of the SMTPClient. Yeah, it's actually still alive and doing well! =D

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Disclaimer: I have manually copied this message to enable for linking purposes. At the time of writing, Nabble is still out of sync.