You indeed seem to have realized what is bothering me. #latestVersion is helpful if it can be reasonably followed with #load - the examples that exist suggest otherwise. Even following the instructions to load the tutorial lead to a walkback, and prior to that, no evidence of methods that are mentioned in what little is online.

We can talk about what is and is not Metacello's responsibilty, but the result as a whole is currently too fragile for its own good. Sorry, I know that will sting a bit for people working hard on this, but it needs either a central repository of version data (and/or additional expectations of the configuration classes), and it certainly needs better factoring.

For my own sanity, I have Monticello "load latest" capability, which all I need for my own code. Picture 100 or so packages that have to get saved from one image and loaded into the next - newer is bettter, end of story. I am trying to find a way to make a stable interface to Metacello for external packages, but for now it all looks like a moving target.

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 10:22 PM, Schwab,Wilhelm K <bschwab@anest.ufl.edu> wrote:

For any given cofiguration, how does one know which version to load?

Ok, now I think I got what you meant with your question. This question is difficult to answer as it doesn't depends on Metacello. If you want to know which version exactly to load of a particular project, then you need to know about that project or ask the developers/maintainers. It is not a Metacello responsibility. If the person who writes the Configuration is cool, it will put the whole changes/changelog in the #description: of the version method. So that you can at least read it.

On the other hand, there are also the blessings. For example, if you are just a user, I would download the last stable release. You can choose also the last beta, or whatever. If you are a developer, you may want to download the latest, even if it is in development. For all these cases, Metacello helps you with methods like lastVersion, etc.

Finally, as I said, it doesn't depends too much in the tool. The same question you ask, apply to Universes, SqueakMap or whatever. In all of them you have different versions. And which version to load depends on the project and on the user (what do you want to do with it).

Cheers

Mariano

There are incantations in the beginner workspace, but what happens for things not listed there?

Bill

_______________________________________________
Pharo-project mailing list
Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr
http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project