[squeak-dev] How can simple version control be implemented for binary objects?

karl ramberg karlramberg at gmail.com
Wed Feb 1 17:30:38 UTC 2012


On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Lawson English <lenglish5 at cox.net> wrote:
> Again, I refer people to the Spoon project.

I have given info to Craig about the issues I had with running Spoon.

>
> Lawson
>
>
> On 2/1/12 5:27 AM, David Corking wrote:
>>
>> Although it is not a current area of my personal interest, I want to
>> piggyback on the current discussion about configuration management and
>> version control with this question, as I think the answer may be
>> relevant to future projects, such as rich multimedia applications,
>> rich user interfaces, and active essays.
>>
>> How can simple version control be implemented for binary objects? I am
>> thinking of such things as drawings made with the paint tool, and
>> audio recorded with the sound recorder, as well as compound objects
>> such as texts with embedded images, formatting and hyperlinks: the
>> things that web developers call 'assets'.
>>
>> A reasonable approach seems to be to place an updated image in a
>> file-based version control system, and then use scripts to keep source
>> code up-to-date (from a Monticello repository) and build releases.
>> That requires manual coordination of the assets in a base image.
>>
>> Another might be to export project files (.pr files also known as
>> image segments) into a versioned file system such as a webdav server.
>> Is it easy to use assets in project files? I don't know how difficult
>> it is to programmatically move objects from project worlds into flaps
>> or into other worlds.
>>
>> Does anyone use more fine-grained controls that allow, say, individual
>> morphs or models to be versioned in multi-developer projects? Is
>> Morph's fileOut method suitable?

A fine-grained version control would help in Etoys development as
Morph/Player instances
fast become hard to track and takes quite a bit of discipline to
maintain and update a
Etoys project. A system for tracking these changes would be really nice.

Karl
>>
>> I seem to recall (a year or more ago) that Edgar suggested that such
>> an objective may be achieved by extending the project / image segment
>> system. Does that still seem reasonable and has anyone made progress
>> on that front? Alternatively, is it feasible to extend existing
>> Smalltalk config management tools in this direction? (I think
>> Monticello already handles rich hypertext in source code comments, so
>> could it one day handle more complex objects?)
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>
>


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