PackageInfo ... where?

Avi Bryant avi at beta4.com
Sat Oct 11 00:16:03 UTC 2003


On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, Andreas Raab wrote:

> Hi Guys,
>
> Is there any way to find out which packages (e.g., PackageInfo) are
> installed in a current Squeak image? I found that looking for "PackageInfo
> allInstances", or "PackageInfo allPackageNames" comes up completely empty in
> the 3.6 release.
>
> What's going on here? Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Instances of PackageInfo are created lazily - so until something actually
uses (or explicitly registers) a package, the instance doesn't exist.  If
you install a package using Monticello or DVS, for example, it'll show up
in #allPackageNames.  Ditto if you create a Monticello working copy, or
use MudPie to start doing analysis.  But a fresh 3.6 image doesn't have
any packages in it, just potentially packagable code - if that makes any
sense.  When you want to obtain/create/reify a package for a particular
category, use "PackageInfo named: 'Category-Name'".

I do think that packages have become central enough that we're now ready
to move away from this lazy, highly non-intrusive notion of package and
start being ever so slightly more aggressive about packaging - for
example, by thinking about what kinds of tool support we want to have in
the base image for managing packages (this is separate from Monticello,
MudPie, etc, which use the package system but do not define it).  I would
like at the least to have:

- a simple UI for viewing and modifying which packages exist in the image
- an FileList-like registry for adding context-menu items and/or buttons
to this UI
- images to come with the core packages actually predefined as packages

Of course ideally we would also start modifying the browsers, etc, to be
more package savvy as well.

Avi



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