[Newbies] Changesets, Monticello and SqueakMap

[goran at krampe.se]

Hi!

Norbert Hartl <norbert at hartl.name> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> at the moment I try to figure out how the three configuration 
> management approaches fit together. After switching to Monticello 

Mmmm, they are three quite different beasts. I wouldn't call SqueakMap a
"configuration management approach". :)

> I found my life a lot easier :) Monticello is of great help!

Indeed.
 
> Then I noticed that changesets are named after the Monticello 
> package that was last imported. I'm not quite sure if changesets 
> have any benefit if someone is using monticello.

Well, they are still useful as a "plainer" format for small fixes etc.
We still use them on Mantis as attachments for fixes.
A ChangeSet is very much like a "patch" in unix land. But they can be
terribly confusing to work with.

> Then there is squeakmap. Squeakmap seems to be the official 
> release server. Is squeakmap tied to a special format? Can 

SqueakMap is a catalog. Yes, it is official and *currently* there is
only one (SM3 is being planned and is intended to be able to work in a
more distributed fashion with multiple "mixin" servers).

No, it is not tied to a special format.

> squeakmap use monticello  packages as well? I'm asking because I 

Oh, yes it can.

> had problems to find any version information on squeakmap (beside
> the squeakmap version).

Unsure what you mean. You should be able to easily see the releases and
their download URLs and thus the formats.
In short - SM supports IIRC:

.pr - Project files.
.cs .st .cs.gz .st.gz - ChangeSets and regular old fileouts, compressed
or not.
.sar - Squeak ARchives (a zip file with some conventions)
.mcz - Monticello snapshots (using either MCInstaller or Monticell -
whichever your image has)


> While reading the squeak lists it appeared to me that a lot of 
> you are developing with monticello and releasing on squeakmap. But 
> I didn't find any information about the source (e.g. monticello 
> version) version. 

Monticello only has one version of the format so far. So it doesn't
matter which version of Monticello you use.
Btw, I recommend using a newer Monticello than the one on SM (not sure
why Avi hasn't made a new SM release): .279 

> I think it would be great to install a release from squeakmap and 
> having the opportunity to open monticello and see which newer 
> versions (and most important what changes) have been made. The 

Mmmm, you can do that. But sure, you need to add the correct MC repo to
look in manually.

> squeakmap packages could also add their repository to monticello 
> when they are installed.

Yes, that would be neat. I have actually planned to add a "Repository"
field to packages, but a small snag was how to represent a repo
textually. I did consider to use the "doit" that creates it, just like
in MC. But that would be a nasty security hole - unless I add
restrictions on it. An alternative would be to invent a "URLish" syntax
for MC repos.
 
> The only reason against it I can imagine is that this would introduce
> dependencies which aren't wanted.

Not sure how you mean.

regards, Göran

PS. I wrote and maintain SqueakMap so feel free to ask me anything about
it.