Since Goran mentioned DeltaStreams, i'd like to share one of my ideas, which came into my mind, when i complete coding the method trailers. I made a method trailers open for future extensions. A first step would be to introduce an abstract 'source management' layer, which will be responsible for delivering a method's and classes sources from some abstract data source. The next step is actually implement such data sources. So, the idea is to abandon hardwiring with .sources and .changes files. What new opportunities it gives to us? Suppose that instead of storing sources into file, you putting them directly to database , such as CouchDB (yes! :). Now if you imagine that anyone could access to this database on some public location, this means that we automagically made a source code exchange hub, and could do a very cool things with it. Suppose that ALL source code is put into a single database. Now different users creating own accounts and makind own 'forks' from original. What we getting is a number of update streams (methods, doits etc etc), which lying in those databases, and if one user wants to load/merge code from one of the sources he simply points to it and it get loaded into his image. We could organize things very closely to what github currently is: everyone could create any number of new projects, or forks of existing ones. Freely exchange the code, do a cherry picking etc etc. And what is most important, that with such organization you can track any methods, classes in the image and their evolutionary history back to its origin. As well as, you can query database, how an when a concrete method/class get deleted (everything is recorded, not just current state). Also, it would allow us to manipulate the code at the lowest level of granularity (individual methods/classes/doits, same as DS does), not at a package level. There are a lot of synergy with DeltaStreams - it could serve as an 'offline' format, in same way as git storing the files locally, but can reconnect with remote storage (which can be a public database). One of the things, which could be made is to allow stashing/popping code from stash. Suppose two projects started from a single starting point (Squeak 3.9). Now suppose that by clicking a single button you could get either trunk image, or Pharo 1.0 image. But that's not all! With DeltaStreams, you could then click once more, and revert things back from , say Pharo 1.0 to trunk or vice versa :) Of course it would be stupid to do things at such large scale, but if we put some common 'root' stuff into database, then we could very easily track all changes & compare them. This would make cherry picking and code exchange much more easier. This could get us on the next level of code management and system organization and organization of community efforts. 2010/2/23 Göran Krampe <goran@krampe.se>:
Hi!
Germán Arduino wrote:
Hi Göran:
Sorry by my intromision here, but want to say somethings :)
2010/2/23 Göran Krampe <goran@krampe.se <mailto:goran@krampe.se>> [SNIP]   What I have seen so far in Metacello is indeed nothing new - the   senarios and discussions about dependencies etc go loooong way back.
I'm on Squeak from old 3.2 times. And yes, a lot of discussions about packages, etc, but only discussions on most of cases. I think Metacello solves the dependencies questions very well and the other tools not (with exception of Universes probably, but abandoned now). Also Metacello provides all the features explained on the excellent mail of Torsten, assuring that the configurations will work with the time not breaking stuffs.
The solution of using Metacello+Monticello is, imho, very simple, easy and productive and is here, available to us. :)
I never claimed otherwise! I am just saying that there is nothing new - and frankly, though I admit not having read carefully, I didn't find the example so... impressive. Perhaps I need to read it again.
Again though - I am not saying anything negative about Metacello.
[SNIP]
  Anyway, "common exchange mechanism" - I am working on Deltastreams which   I even presented at Brest, though unfortunately colliding with the   Seaside tutorial. Deltas and Deltastreams are indeed focused on EXACTLY   this problem (fork interchange), and it was born in 2007:
  http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2007-August/119471.ht...
  I and Igor are the ones working on it - and after Brest we have had very   little time to move it forward. I still think it is a very important   piece of the puzzle though.
But Deltastreams are ready to use on production systems?
Nope, not yet, although very close. But since the topic came up I wanted to mention it. But AFAIK there is no other tool/project aimed at that use case. Again, I may be wrong :)
regards, Göran
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