Newbie Questions

[Chris Muller]

Hi Ross,

> Do you recommend using r41 or the r42beta?  I can be a bit of a guinea
> pig, but I'm more concerned with getting my program working.

Definitely r42Beta2 (or higher, if available).  It has many
improvements over r41 and I believe, despite its name, it is at least
as stable, probably more.

> What channel should I use to get Magma?  I gather there are several
> (SqueakMap, SqueakSource, UniverseBrowser).

All of the individual packages are always available on SqueakSource.
In addition, I make available a "Monticello Configuration" which has
the latest batch of packages for which I have run the test suite.
However..

Just this last week, I put a bunch of work into a tool that lets me
make a SAR very easily.  Therefore I intend to start keeping the
version of Magma available on SqueakMap much more up to date; in fact,
at this moment, SqueakMap is the *only* place to download r42 with one
click.  I will plan to update the Monticello configuration today.

> I'm thinking of using Damien's squeak-dev 3.10 image.  Should that work?

Please run the Magma test suite on that image.  It's really the best
and only way to know.

  1)  Load Magma tester from SqueakMap
  2)  MagmaTestCase fullSuite maDebug  "do it"

> I will be using DateAndTime and, probably, TimeSpan's (e.g., Date,
> Month).  Since TimeSpan's are intervals, rather than points, I'm not
> sure how or if they can be put in indices or used in queries.
>
> The documentation asks for attributes to be indexed.  Does this mean
> instance variables, or can one index the results of methods?

It indexes based on the results of method calculations.  But perhaps
the reason the word "attribute" was used is you have to be careful
that if instVars change to cause the calculated value of your index
value to change, you must inform Magma.

>  For
> example, if an object has a TimeSpan instance variable and methods
> #start and #end that give the start and endpoints of that variable, can
> I index on start and end?

Yes of course, please see the docs for creaqting your own custom index type.

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2668

 - Chris