[Newbies] status of the 'mvc' environment?

[David T. Lewis]

On Sat, Sep 06, 2014 at 07:43:04PM +0530, Mayuresh Kathe wrote:
> On 2014-09-06 17:56, David T. Lewis wrote:
> >On Sat, Sep 06, 2014 at 09:09:29AM +0530, Mayuresh Kathe wrote:
> >>hello,
> >>
> >>i am returning to squeak after a gap of 14 years.
> >>back then, i used to work only within the 'mvc' environment as morphic
> >>hadn't taken off the way it has now.
> >>
> >>i still prefer the simplicity and lightness of the 'mvc' environment.
> >>
> >>at last use, the 'mvc' environment felt quite sluggish and crashed my
> >>squeak session multiple times.
> >>hope all is well!
> >>
> >>~mayuresh
> >
> >MVC worked well in Squeak up through version 3.8 of Squeak. In Squeak 
> >3.9
> >it was broken, and it was not restored to a usable state until 
> >recently.
> >
> >In a current Squeak image (version 4.5 or later) MVC should work well,
> >although you will still find some problems. It should not be sluggish, 
> >and
> >it definitely should not crash your squeak session.
> >
> >I would suggest trying a recent Squeak image to see if it works well 
> >enough
> >for you. Otherwise, the Squeak 3.8 image is very good, and the small 
> >MVC
> >image that Hannes mentioned is excellent if your interest is in MVC 
> >itself.
> >
> >To enter MVC in Squeak from the toolbar on the top:
> >  Projects -> New Project -> New MVCProject
> >
> >From the world menu:
> >  World -> open -> mvc project
> >
> >If you do decide to use an up to date Squeak image, any fixes or 
> >contributions
> >that you can make to MVC will be very welcome on the squeak-dev mailing 
> >list.
> >
> >Welcome back :-)
> 
> thanks for the warm welcome. :)
> 
> i last tried squeak on ubuntu 13.10 which packages 3.9, so i guess 
> that's where the problem is.

Yes, that's the problem. Squeak 3.9 was totally broken for MVC. Things
are much better now.

> about the 'mvc' image thing, long back, there used to be a way to shrink 
> an image leaving in only 'mvc', does it still exist?
>

It probably does not exist right now. One of the overall goals in Squeak
is to make packages reloadable. That means making it possible to completely
remove something (like Morphic), then reload it, and still have a working
system. Currently this can be done for MVC, but we have not yet done the
work to make it possible for Morphic.

Dave