[Pharo-project] Some questions on how to help

[Norbert Hartl]

Hi,

I really appreciate the existence of the pharo project. For
me I declared it as a good starting point for me to dive
into the deeper waters of squeak/pharo. My biggest problem
is that I do not know how exactly things have to be done. 
I don't want to just submit changes without to know if the
worth it. 

A little story. I started last week to toy around with the
newest pharo release. On the web site I read that all tests
green is a primary goal. So I started to let the test runner
run all tests. After having some trouble I found a failing
test in NumberParsingTest. The test is failing because the
test case expects Number>>readFrom: to throw an error if a
number couldn't be parsed. Searchig the ST80 book I found
nothing about Number>>readFrom:. Searching the web I found
a thread on squeak-dev from january where the outcome was:

- readFrom: returns 0 on unsuccesful read attempt to satisfy
  the parser (sounds like some history thing)
- readExactlyFrom: does throw an error an unsuccesful read 
  attempt. And it utilizes sqNumberParser

So what to do? I tried to be least aggressive and fixed the
test case to use readExactlyFrom: (and then splitting the
test case into two because the test does different things).
Not thinking first I would have asked a lot of questions on
this list:

- Do we want to preserve the current readFrom: ?
- Should we integrate sqNumberParser completely avoiding 
  mulitple implementations?
- Is it only me having slightly problems having a class
  Number which uses a class SqNumberParser instead of 
  integrating the code into the Number hierarchy?

Is there a way to get this questions answered without generating
a lot of noise on the list?

Other questions:

- I scanned the image for obsolete references and found some. I
  don't know how to deal with it in an update. Using

  ServerDirectory resetServers.
  FileServices removeObsolete.
  PackageOrganizer default unregisterPackageNamed:
'FlexibleVocabularies'

  I have removed all obsolete references but one. How is this 
  integrated into the upstream?

- Trying to solve the last obsolete references I found an obsolete
  class referenced in PasteUpMorph. The method which referenced it
  is PasteUpMorph>>isSafeToServe. The method is in category 
  Nebraska. I thought Nebraska has been removed from the system.
  Thinking that I would have removed all methods of this category
  but one because they have no senders. 
  One method transferRemoteServerFrom: is referenced from 
  Project>>enter: returningFlag revert: revertFlag saveForRevert:
saveForRevert 
  Is it ok to rip this call out (by trying to understand what it
  does in class Project ;) )


Some words of advice would be helpful to get a feeling about those
things. I don't have a problem preparing some stuff and put it into
the Inbox. A problem would be to have a patch rejected without
explanation :)

Norbert