Hi Vitor, Thanks for your report. Sorry I don't use Windows to respond directly to your issues, but a few comments... On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 10:16 AM, Vitor Medina Cruz <vitormcruz@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I am doing some katas and challenges using pharo 5, and I got a bad impression from the VCS and Project management as a whole. I got a bunch of problems with, as it seems to me, simple stuff, and so I loose a lot of confidence with the system :( I get myself saving the image a lot and double checking anything done with version control. I am going to tell more or less what I have done in the last days for you to get an idea of the problems I had and then ask some questions.
I am using Pharo 5 in a Windows 10 system and I was first trying to use GIT as the underlying provider for monticello. I know gitfiletree has problems in a windows system, but I tried to use it anyway to see what happens and I got an image unusable, with Nautilus package view messed up with red blocks and yellow crosses.... scary. I am not sure if that problem with Nautilus was actually caused by gitfiletree since I changed the package of the configuration of my project (I did that only to see if I could) and then rolled that back while testing gitfiletree... but, well, gitfiletree do not work on Windows, I got an index out of bounds exception or something like that, so I gave up and used filetree with a git client to make actual commits.
However, for anyone to load my configurations and projects, I could not use filetree with a local directory, so I created a smalltalkhub repository and started to commit there and on my local filetree directory. I used Kommiter to commit onto smalltalkhub and Monticello to copy changes to my local file tree until I got and error using Komiter. I tried to proceed instead of abort and one of the packages didn't commit correctly. Trying to access it on the smalltalkhub site I got an error....
I opened Monticello and had to Flush Cached Version so that it stopped to tell me that there were no changes and started to prompt an error message. I had to forcibly save a new version so that it work again. If I go now to smalltalkhub, sometimes I got errors, sometimes don't. I don't know yet if the error was with komiter, smalltalkhub or my image.
Oh, and Monticello sometimes says there are changes to pakages that I haven't changed, when I click on changes it discover that there are no changes and remover the "*" mark of it.
This is an old niggle. I've not found this one to impact overall reliability of Monticello.
I tried using Versioner too, but sometimes when I try to commit a minor version, for example, the system hangs and I need to "Alt + .". For now the reliable way of using versioner is to create a release version and commit from Monticello
Right now I fell like stepping in a land mine, so I would like to know:
1- Shouldn't I be using Windows? Pharo isn't stable on a Windows platform?
Pharo has traditionally been very stable of Windows - but Pharo 5 had a major change to move to the Spur VM and change in FFI, so perhaps there are some things to iron out. Please help us to identify them.
2- Is Komiter reliable or should I use Monticello directly? 3- Is Smalltalkhub reliable or should I use other repository?
Smalltalkhub is generally reliable. There are occasionally some maintenance issues that are quickly resolved. You could also try... http://ss3.gemtalksystems.com/ http://squeaksource.com/
4- I don't believe those problems are normal, otherwise there wouldn't be so many places using Pharo for production purpose, any hints of what I may be doing wrong? :(
Often newcomers bump into problems because your usage is slightly different; or the rest of use have learned to unconsciously step over them like a wobbly slab in your garden path; or the rest of us live with / work around minor problems because they are outweighed by the benefits we gain from Pharo (that of course newcomers are yet to fully appreciate and the niggles are more obvious and a greater concern).
Thanks in advance and sorry if the stuff I am doing seems dumb... :(
Sometimes it can feel that way trying a new platform, but your experience is important for being different from those using Pharo a long time. There are more potential newcomers than there are users of Pharo. cheers -ben