[squeak-dev] Re: Embracing Projects

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Thu Nov 26 07:32:56 UTC 2009


Hi Tansel -

Nice to hear from you! This little demo is obviously not complete by any 
means :-) In the longer term, what I am imagining is more along the 
lines of projects storing their version and their contents and then 
(upon loading the project) that project first fetching the 'right' 
version of the code and afterwards loading its contents. This should 
work quite well assuming that the underpinnings (basic Squeak version 
etc) don't change. But even then, just recording that this project was 
saved with version x.y and may have issue when loaded into version x.z 
goes a very long way.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Tansel Ersavas wrote:
> This is great news!
> 
> I have always liked projects but my earlier attempts of trying to 
> separate them from images didn't go smooth and I had difficulty moving 
> projects between images.  (Anyone remember trying to save projects from 
> within SqueakNews issues?) In hindsight most of them were due to lousy 
> global variables or some complex relationships but even a smarter 
> extraction process that can inform potential problems will go a long 
> way. Mobilization of projects a la Squeakland but on a grander scale 
> will greatly enhance the ability to make "the experience" of being in an 
> object world much more attractive.
> 
> Tansel
> 
> 
> On 26/11/2009, at 3:25 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
> 
>> Folks -
>>
>> I always felt that one of the least used "big ideas" in Squeak is that 
>> of projects. Projects are incredibly powerful but have often been 
>> severely misunderstood. A Project in Squeak can define an entire 
>> environment (MVC, Morphic, Tweak), it can be a modification to an 
>> existing environment, it can identify a set of tools to be used in 
>> some context and more.
>>
>> The progress that we've made with refactoring of class Project makes 
>> it feasible to illustrate the power of projects. If you install the 
>> attached change set in an updated trunk image, you will find a new 
>> type of project available - a  GamesProject. When you choose this type 
>> of project you will notice that it downloads and installs the 
>> MorphicGames package that Edgar just announced (thanks Edgar!), sets 
>> up the environment with a set of games before launching into it. (note 
>> that I didn't go as far as setting up the menu bar with games, 
>> removing the tools, sealing the programmer facilities etc. but all of 
>> this is possible and should be considered for the various types of 
>> projects)
>>
>> And of course, when we ship the next image, we could actually include 
>> a number of such "proto projects" like the GamesProject - it takes a 
>> tiny amount of space but makes it very accessible and very visible 
>> from an user point of view. As a conseqence, we can hopefully ship the 
>> next Squeak version with (proto-)Games, Etoys, VMMaker, Seaside and 
>> whatnot projects.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>  - Andreas
>>
>> <GamesProject.st>
> 
> 
> 




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