etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki at vpri.org> writes:

> [...]
>> You'd be all set if you had Smalltalk source code that you
>> could feed into any random Smalltalk system to create
>> your build tools.

>> While I happen to like C, and it's a very popular way to
>> achieve the required ability to bootstrap, it isn't needed.
>> You even get a certain amount of respect from writing
>> the whole thing in Smalltalk. Use GNU Smalltalk.

> Your view on systems are way too limited.  Where did this "any
> random Smalltalk" came from?  [...]  Please just don't make up new
> "complaint" whenever the old one didn't work.

He is trying to help you by giving an example how bootstrapping could
-- not must -- work for squeak.  GNU Smalltalk does it.  (It's more
elaborate than your write("\x12..", 10000), but logical - study it!)
Emacs does it.  Prologs, LISPs do it.  Just about every really free
language system I can think of nowadays does it.  Once squeak & etoys
can do it too, these issues disappear.

You would no longer have to explain/justify that "change set passing
is how we do things", because it wouldn't matter.  You wouldn't have
to explain to others whether .sources/.changes files are separate or
internal to the image, which is a distinction without a difference.  A
new public release could consist of just a fileOut:.

You wouldn't have to just *claim* that "the new image blob is just
that old image blob, plus these .changes chunks", because you could
*prove* something even stronger.  You wouldn't have to refer others to
tools like SystemTracer that you hardly ever seem to use yourselves.

You wouldn't have to rely on strangers trusting the long chain of
custody/ancestry of the binary image blobs.  That worked fine when
Smalltalk was a commercial product, but not now, when one's "upstream"
can be any web site with redistribution rights and lawsuit-immune
contributors.

Even you may rest a bit easier, knowing that the image blob would no
longer be a precious heirloom with a murky history embedded within it,
but something that can be recreated clean and new on demand.


- FChE