How do people manage their images and code

goran.krampe at bluefish.se goran.krampe at bluefish.se
Wed Nov 3 11:52:05 UTC 2004


Hi Rob and all!

Rob Lally <smalltalk at roblally.plus.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am looking for advice about how to manage my squeak image and my 
> squeak code. I suppose these are two different things requiring 
> different strategies for the management of each.

Yeah. :)

>  Here's what I've been doing so far:
> 
> 1) With my image I've resorted to making a copy of the whole squeak 
> directory - VM and everything before I update/download packages from the 
> web repository. This seems kind of ... primitive but I can't think of an 
> alternative. Are there better practices?

Eh... that seems unnecessary. First of all - you write "download
packages from the web repository" - are you referring to SqueakMap? If
so - I hope you are aware of the SqueakMap Package Loader tool inside
Squeak?

If you *do* use the package loader (as you should, as long as you are
downloading/installing stuff from SM) then you can safely have multiple
images/changes-file pairs in the same directory.

In short - what you can do if you want a "safety snapshot" before you
start messing around - use "save as..." and save the image under a new
name or use "save as new version". This will create a new
image/changes-pair and leave the current one for rollback purposes.

So there is no need to backup the sources file (doesn't change), the VM
(doesn't change) nor the "sm" directory (same contents regardless of
image you use).

> 2) For code - I write the change sets out to file periodically and copy 
> them away. Again primitive and unsatisfactory. Particularly since I have 
> no way to tie them to the state of the image when I backed them up.
> 
> I understand that there are various package and code managers such as 
> Monticello available. What should I be using? What are the current 
> Squeak best practices in this area?

Best practice today is to use Monticello. Much better, simpler and
robust. It also makes juggling images much easier.
So start using it NOW. :)

ENHs and FIXes should still be submitted as changesets though.

> Thanks ( in advance ) for your help.
> 
> 
> Rob.

regards, Göran



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