[Seaside] Remote Development with Squeak/Seaside

[Jimmie Houchin]

Adrian Lienhard wrote:
> Hi Jimmie
> 
>> Do most of the Seaside developers have regular physical access to the 
>> machines they develop and deploy including after deployment?
> 
> I can't speak for all people of course, but in my experience - our 
> company has currently about five productive Seaside apps running - you 
> do not want to do anything more than loading new code in the deployed 
> images. Or else, it is an emergency you have to try to track down a bug 
> you can't reproduce or something. Doing any coding in the productive app 
> is just too risky. We develop always on our local images, test it and 
> then publish to our Monticello repository. The only thing we then do is 
> loading the new version in the deployed app. Of course, sometimes you 
> have to take care because, for example, loading a new version which adds 
> instance variables to a Seaside component can cause problems for running 
> sessions. What might also be an issue is if you have changes in your 
> database schema or domain model and thus have to do transformations.

Okay.  That's kind of what I figured would be best. Developing on a local image.

Do you use VNC to load the new code or update from the MC repository?
Or do you simply have a method in your deployed image you can call via the web 
which does it for you?

So basically,
Develop locally.
Publish to MC repository.
Update server from the MC repository.

>> Is VNC the predominant means of developing remotely?
> 
> yes, we use VNC, and it was reasonably fast in my experience.

OK.

>> How well or much can you do with the Seaside browser (inside the web 
>> browser)?
>> ie: how practical?  not fixing or minor development, but full 
>> development.
> 
> my opinion is that this browser is nice for demos, but... well, I have 
> never used it to do anything else.

Gotcha.

>> How close or ready is LiveWeb?
>>
>> Just wanting to keep the discussion alive and learn how active 
>> Squeak/Seaside developers handle development on a remote deployed 
>> machine.
> 
> does anybody really develop on a deployed app? I can't imagine.

I have not developed a website, so have no experience. I wasn't sure how it was 
normally done in Squeak/Seaside. I couldn't imagine actively developing with the 
deployed image machine. But I wasn't quite sure how one went about adding new 
features and items to a deployed website that you don't have physical access to.

My server currently is at my home on my LAN. I wanted to learn somewhat how 
these issues were handled,while I can explore and experiment with the different 
processes while I currently do have physical access. Once I deploy access is 
about 80 miles, 128 km, or about 2 hours away. Not horrible, but also not 
horribly convenient. :)

Thanks.

Jimmie Houchin