[Seaside] Gemstone/S Local Development Support

[James Foster]

Conrad Taylor wrote:
> Hi, could someone tell me the configuration that's used locally if 
> you're deploying on Gemstone/S remotely?
Short answer: one possible client configuration to access a remote 
GemStone/S is telnet/rsh/ssh; nother is Squeak with a GemStone/S client 
library.

Long answer: GemStone/S 64-bit runs on various Unix-like platforms (AIX, 
HPUX, Solaris, and Linux). GemStone/S has a "native" user interface that 
is text-based (quite like the OS command shell), so if you can get to a 
host (telnet, rsh, or ssh) that has the software installed, then you can 
do various administrative tasks. A typical configuration for GemStone/S 
is to have it act as a server and accept logins initiated from clients 
on the network. This calls for some software on the client, and 
supported clients include all the server platforms plus Windows 
(unsupported libraries for Mac are in beta). Traditionally, the "fat 
client" model involves connecting to GemStone/S from VisualWorks or 
VisualAge (others have done interfaces from Squeak and Dolphin). The 
plan for the GemStone/S Web Edition is to provide tools in Squeak that 
use a shared library (DLL or SO installed on the client machine) that 
gives you access to a GemStone/S server running remotely (either on you 
LAN or on the Internet).
>  Also, it appears to be a level of porting to go from 
> Squeak/VisualWorks to Gemstone/S. 
The porting is of the Seaside application and the work depends on how 
much use you make of dialect-specific variations. So far, a good bit of 
the typical Squeak behavior has been brought into GemStone/S, so that 
applications have ported reasonably well.
> Thus, is there any planned native support for Mac OS X and Windows on 
> the local development platforms?
As mentioned above, Windows is a supported client (and Mac can be used 
but is not officially supported). This does not reduce in any way the 
need to port your Seaside code from VisualWorks Smalltalk to GemStone/S 
Smalltalk. The class libraries are on the server in GemStone/S and are 
the same whether the client is Unix, Linux, Mac, or Windows.

James