[Seaside-dev] Prototype and script.aculo.us frameworks in Seaside 2.9

[Lukas Renggli]

> Yes, this sounds doable to me because I really don't want to be loading
> un-needing components.  Seaside provide a mechanism to automatically
> generate the API when these components are included in the head tag?
> For example, if a new stable release is published with a new and/or
> modified API, would these new additions be added to Seaside's interface
> for this component?

What are you referring to as "Component"? The Javascript classes found
in Prototype and script.aculo.us libraries? If so, then yes.

As soon as new versions of these libraries are released I usually
update the Smalltalk bindings within a few days. This is not an
automated process though, I have to work through the changes and
update the bindings manually. For the JQuery packages I have a script
that downloads and parses the documentation and automatically
generates the required code. I don't know if Prototype and
script.aculo.us are still maintained these days, there were no big
releases for a very long time.

> It would be great if I can click a Seaside component and select update
> without
> destroying the image.  At time time, I was informed that I would need to use
> an
> image that doesn't have Seaside in it.  It's like creating a new document
> each time
> you add a new paragraph to it.  Will this be resolved in the future?

This is not really a problem of Seaside, but rather of Smalltalk and
the way how code is loaded and packaged. While Seaside is still in
alpha phase we rename packages and move classes around. Loading such
changes in the right order is very hard, without that you end up with
many obsolete classes and broken objects.

As Seaside 2.9 becomes more stable, updating should become easier.
There are also at least two projects that try to solve with the issues
of loading, updating and uninstalling code in a running system.

I think that generally it is a good practice if you package code so
that it can be cleanly loaded into a new image. This also makes the
deployment much easier. Some people even advocate to create a new and
clean image every day, while this certainly has its advantages it is
also sort of a lame excuse that it is not possible to easily update
that have many dependencies ;-)

Cheers,
Lukas

-- 
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch