[etoys-dev] Preparing for Monticello-based updates

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 21.04.2010, at 05:20, K. K. Subramaniam wrote:
> 
> On Monday 19 April 2010 05:22:14 pm Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> Download Etoys-To-Go4-Final.zip from squeakland.org and unzip and run
>> * get halo for world, choose "preferences..." from halo menu
>> * disable "eToyFriendly" in the "scripting category"
>> * click the gray World background, choose "previous project" from the World
>> menu
>> * you'll be taken to the hidden top-level project, light-blue
>> background
>> now is a good time to save the image
> 
> Linux users will get an error about missing sources file when trying to save 
> the image under a new name.

Well, my instructions said "save" not "save as" ;)

Etoys hard-codes the image name anyway, working with several images is not supported without fiddling. The error is not even Linux-specific, you get the same error on the Mac.

Save replaces the image where it was. Save-as stores into the default directory, even if you do not change the image name. In Etoys, the default directory usually differs from the image directory, unlike regular Squeak. The image directory usually is read-only (that's why I recommended Etoys-To-Go where it is writable).

Because of this, save-as will not store the image where it was originally (inside Etoys-To-Go.app in this case), but into the "user directory". That is the "Etoys" folder next to "Etoys-To-Go.app". But running Etoys-To-Go again will not use that saved image but still the original one. Running a copy of the image outside the Resources folder will not work either, as translations and examples etc. are looked up relative to the image.

> It looks for sources file in Contents/Linux-i686 
> while the sources file is in Contents/Resources. Workaround is to link the file 
> into the vmPath.

Well, that makes the error go away, but as I explained above, will not result in a fully functional Etoys.

If you really wanted to support out-of-place images, you would have to change the logic for both the source file lookup and resources lookup. There has been no need for that so far, but we'd happily take (reasonable) patches :)

- Bert -