On 05.08.2010, at 17:09, Miguel Enrique Cobá MartÃnez wrote:
El mié, 04-08-2010 a las 23:32 -0300, Javier Pimás escribió:
Maybe I saying nonsense, if that is the case just ignore me but... why have many packages that do almost exactly the same? Aren't you going to get a lot of repeated code lying around in different packages? ie. I think most packages have almost exactly the same baselines for pharo1.x. Maybe it's possible to call the methods baselineXXForPharoXX and let them stay in the same class and package? Or maybe adding other pragma to specify which pharo version each baseline/version describes. I'm sure there could be other solutions. That way you'd have all the configurations in the same place and also reuse code if needed instead of duplicating it.
I think Javier is right. I, too, have problems to understand how this should work. A lot of the ConfigurationOfxxx files are about software projects that run on pharo and aren't _part_ of it. Just take a project like seaside. That is a project that runs on a lot of platforms (hence the existence of grease).
Clarity. As is very likely that different releases of a package will have distinct requirements in: - dependencies
that is what metacello is all about
- preinstall/postinstall actions - registering with system services (menu, mail systems, sockets, startup/stop list)
that is platform specific. For seaside that needs to be solved from the seaside crew otherwise they won't stay cross-platform very long. And I think there is no point in many people writing in a ConfigurationOfSeaside30 file. Those files should be very dependent on the people writing seaside. Do you think you will add pharo1.1 stuff to the file?
- number of monticello packages composing the package you're installing
that's dependencies
- use of system infraestructure (announcements, transcript, menus, help system)
again platform handling
it will be a nightmare to have code to cope with all those conditions in a single monolithic giant metacello package, even if metacello is capable of do it. What if after 4 years of development the package has had 15 releases, that will means that you'll have possibly 15 baselines/predoits/postdoits all listing in the method pane of the browser. To someone trying to understand the configuration, it will be a lot of junk to discard before he understand only the bits that matter for the release he is interested in.
So, it is healthy to have a distinct configuration in each release (even if in the current release started as a copy of the previous release configuration), to crop the things the _maintainer_ thinks are not needed anymore or simply that he doesn't want to maintain anymore. All the software has a lifetime and distinct repositories gives us the possibility to determine the time to end support for a given release
Please correct me if I'm wrong. By copying the configuration files you make a snapshot of the project without the possibility to alter anything. The configuration file itself is modified by the software project the file is for. Probably the software project does not want anyone to write in the config file. To me a central repository is essential. It is a single well-known source and it carries the idea of cross-platformness :) Isn't that would you are trying to solve not just another ConfigurationOfXXX file. For the moment let's call it ConfigurationOfPharo10Universe. There you can refer to every single version in another ConfigurationOfXXX file that is said to be runnable in that platform. And you can decorate it with pre-/postDoits as you want. I think that most of this software management tasks are solvable by a description of "requires" and "provides". And metacello solves it well. As an example let's think of an example like ConfigurationOfPharoWebDeveloperImage (maintained by the image provider). The developer image develops linearly hence no version number in the file. The ConfigurationOfPharoWebDeveloperImage has dependencies to 20 other software projects that are all defined in a ConfigurationOfPharo11Universe (maintained by the community). Let's say it has a dependency on 'Seaside 3.0'. ConfigurationOfPharo11Universe offers 'Seaside 3.0' and has a dependency of 'Seaside 3.0.3' in ConfigurationOfSeaside30 (maintained by the seaside maintainers). ConfigurationOfSeaside30 has a dependency to 'Grease 1.0.3' in ConfigurationOfGrease. So let's asssume finally that ConfigurationOfGrease would have a dependency to 'Pharo 1.1' when run under pharo1.1 or to 'Pharo 1.1 compat package' when run under pharo 1.0 (metacello allows us to do that). All of these descriptions require and provide anything. And the descriptions are services offered from one group to another taking a certain responsibility. You can always rely on things like "Seaside 3.0" if you trust the people and if not than you use "Seaside 3.0.4rc2a". What I wanted to say is that there are plenty of situations where you want to cluster software packages together. By copying the files you just double to stuff without being able to tweak. Removing the packages from the MetacelloRepository as Stephane suggested would just make them platform dependent. Having less files and clear roles who might change them is something achievable IMHO. Tearing things apart (by copying) lowers sometimes integration effort. Or to say with view from the XML world: "If you want to integrate/cooperate than XML schema is for you If you don't want to do that than use XML namespaces". Norbert
On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 3:18 PM, Dale Henrichs <dhenrich@vmware.com> wrote: Miguel,
I think that this kind of approach makes lots of sense ... I've toyed with the idea of a "white list" of configuration versions, but someone would have to be responsible for maintaining the "white list" and the users would have to responsible for using the "white list" ...
A repository per version is very simple and gives the maintainer flexibility in managing releases.
Dale
Miguel Enrique Cobá MartÃnez wrote:
El mié, 04-08-2010 a las 19:52 +0400, Andrey Larionov escribió: Why there should be repository per release? As i know MetacelloConfiguration already contains information about compatible Pharo versions.
Because is cleaner and as the releases of Pharo diverge a lot more, the code to install package becomes full of conditionals to handle the distinct issues with each pharo release. For example, Magma. Magma 1.1r1 worked good in any pharo 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2. But Magma 1.1r2 doesn't work anymore on Pharo1.0 because Pharo 1.0 doesn't have the classes DirectoryEntryDirectory and DirectoryEntryFile that are used by the new magma version. So I had to modify the configuration with conditionals an several variations of preDoits and postDoits and test what version image is ConfigurationOfMagma is being ran. After a couple of hours I gave up.
The correct solution is to have a specific ConfigurationOfMagma for each released pharo version. This have benefits also: - It permits the unstable repository to heavily update the ConfigurationOfXXX without disturbing or broke the stable ones. - It permits the ConfigurationOfXXX code to remain clean, without a conditionals for every posible combination of release image version and package to be installed version - It permits the maintainer of a ConfigurationOfXXX to decide when to stop supporting old version of a certain package by deleting the old versionXX: methods of the ConfigurationOfXXX in the newer pharo releases. Not always is good to be able to install each and every version of a package in the newest release of pharo (maybe even old versions won't work in the new releases, like the menu registration issue or classes that doesn't belong to the core image) - It permits to issue maintenance ConfigurationOfXXX releases for a stable or "old-stable" image releases, without altering the configurationOfXXX in other repositories Cheers
2010/8/4 Miguel Enrique Cobá MartÃnez <miguel.coba@gmail.com>: El mié, 04-08-2010 a las 11:46 +0200, Torsten Bergmann escribió: Hi Miguel,
hey, nice! If we follow this convention then it is easy to implement a universe browser that selects the correct universe repo and displays all loadable versions. Loading stuff should just be a few clicks away - I personally hate all this MC/Gofer typing ...
Attached is a quick/simple implementation of such a browser:
Mann, Sie sind über schnell!
I tested it in PharoCore 1.0 and worked after a few changes, but the interface is cool. +1 to aim it be the default universe browser in 1.2. Simple, to the point. In Pharo 1.0 I had:
- Open it with Universe open (doesn't register on menu because of the lacking pragmas) - UniverseBrowser pharoUniverse returns PharoCore1.0 instead of Pharo10 to build the universe name. This could be changed in two ways: - Add a system property that states the image repository: SystemVersion current universeName "Returns Pharo10 for image releases 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.5, etc) - Use the equivalent method in the gofer package I uploaded to PharoInbox (if it is approved, so there is only a unique source for converting image version string to universe names)
Other than that, I like the browser.
- file in the attached changeset (I tried in Pharo 1.2) - open via World menu -> "Universe Browser" - select the configuration you want and from the context menu choose -- "Load configuration" -> only the config is loaded -- "Load configuration and latest version" -> the config and lates version is loaded
Have fun! I used Pharo 1.2 - should work in Pharo 1.0 and 1.1 too (havent tested).
Bye T. _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project Cheers
-- Miguel Cobá http://miguel.leugim.com.mx
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