On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 11:28:31AM +0200, goran at krampe.se wrote:
> > > *) Compatible with other systems.  Of course no new revision system is
> > > going to have a chance if it can't deal with packages from all the
> > > other existing systems.  It may even be interesting to generate
> > > packages from these other systems.
> > 
> > This is the feature I'm working on next in DeltaStreams.
> > Specifically, I want to be able to convert Installer scripts
> > into deltas. Installer is a great way to specify what goes into
> > a certain release and what does not. I think so, at least. Maybe
> > you have a better idea with your darcs knowledge.
> 
> I am unsure what Matthew means when he says "convert" - would it be
> simply "recording" all changes being done into a single Delta or?

Yes. By default, DS will log all changes being applied to the
image with as much metadata as possible. However, each tool
could add a lot of very useful metadata to the log that DS alone
would never know about:

- This next group of changes comes from loading Monticello-kph.273
- This next group of changes fix bug 6342
- I am now running a test suite; ignore changes for now; they're
  not important

In the future, I think it may be useful to try to get this data
'without' loading the changes; as a "what if" mechanism.
However, the undoability of deltas may make it not worth
making a special case out of. Things like:

- Show me what would have happened if I ran 'Installer install:
  'Clean'
- I have a SystemEditor with a modified system state; give me a
  delta from the current system to this new, unapplied system
  state
- Show me all the differences between Croquet and 3.11

None of this is yet implemented

-- 
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808