attention: prepare for bug-fix release 1.2.2

[Denys Duchier]

pvr at info.ucl.ac.be (Peter Van Roy) writes:

> I'd like to make QTk be available by default in the system.
> Donatien can do all the mechanics and he will be responsible for
> this part.  Is it still possible before 1.2.2?  I hope so because I
> am teaching a course using Mozart as the platform & I would like to
> make it as easy as possible for the students.  In any case, I think
> that it should be done, why not now.

It's of course easy to do.  However, I have 2 concerns:

* It is not a bug-fix.  If QTk is to be included in the distribution,
  this should probably happen with a full release.

* I was hopping to move towards a better distinction between the core
  system (just the emulator and a minimal library for booting) and the
  standard library that we could maintain separately and release on
  distinct schedules.

  What is unfortunate with the system currently is that way too many
  libraries have been put into the core and the more we add the harder
  it becomes to fix the problem.

  Leif and I have discussed the situation and we believe that a
  reorganization of the system sources is required.  Configuration and
  building has become so complicated that it is very hard to maintain
  and make work on all platforms.  The bootstrapping process is
  unbelievably complex.  We really felt the pain when working on the
  native build for Windows and things are still not working completely
  right.

  We'd like to change to a much simpler staged bootstrapping process.
  Ideally the standard library could be entirely built using ozmake
  which would remove the Makefile nightmare and the fantastic
  juggling with OZ_LOAD.

  Thus instead of including QTk in the current distribution in the old
  way, I'd like to start instead an embryo of a standard library of
  which QTk would be part.  Thus users could easily upgrade their
  standard library using ozmake whenever improvements are made or new
  contributions added.

Now, understand that I propose the standard library as an integral
_part_ of the distribution, but I would like it to have an existence
independent of the core system.  This separation is needed; we might
as well implement it now.

As it comes to ease of use by students, I strongly encourage you to
take advantage of ozmake to provide any additional packages you want
to make available to them.  If these packages contain pure Oz code,
you can even distribute them in precompiled form.  We have used ozmake
in our course, and that worked really well: they used ozmake to
install additional libraries for the course and they used ozmake to
create packages containing their homeworks.  That made their lives and
ours a lot simpler.

Cheers,

-- 
Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier at ps.uni-sb.de
Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615
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