I meant to include a link to the monticello web site which has some info 
on motivation, features, how to use it, etc.:

http://www.wiresong.ca/Monticello/

Julian Fitzell wrote:
> Victor Rodriguez wrote:
> 
>> What about just filing out classes to individual files and checking
>> those into SVN?
> 
> 
> The major problem with this approach is that you need to add and remove 
> files from CVS or SVN when you add or remove classes.  It also doesn't 
> handle the case of method overrides on other classes, which Monticello 
> handles seamlessly for you (as long as you put the methods in a properly 
> named category).  Also, as you point out, filing in all the classes over 
> and over even though they haven't changed can be slow in a large project.
> 
>> A disclaimer: I just started playing with Smalltalk and Squeak and
>> know very little of change sets, and nothing about Monticello.
>>
>> To keep my own code in CVS I have been thinking about writing a little
>> tool to file out all the classes in the category I'm using for them
>> (I'm assuming this is possible). Then I would use my CVS client
>> (XEmacs) to check-in the modified files.
> 
> 
> The tool you are describing sounds basically like the original 
> Monticello, now called MonticelloCVS.  The only real difference being 
> that we decided, for various reasons after months of trying different 
> approaches, to use one file per package instead of one per class.  We 
> also determined an best-possible ordering of code to minimize cvs 
> "conflicts" by reducing the amount of code reordering going on when you 
> add methods, etc.
> 
> The original monticello worked great except that it suffered from the 
> same problems that CVS always does: it doesn't have any syntactic 
> understanding of the code or the changes, so "conflicts" can begin to 
> run rampant because of your merging patterns or because people are 
> working in physically-proximate but unrelated locations in the source code.
> 
> The new Monticello (and the newer one in development) addresses these 
> issues by storing version history and adding an understanding of what a 
> method is, what a comment is, what a timestamp is, etc.  It provides 
> branching, merging, conflict resolution, multiple repositories, etc. all 
> quite simply from within the image.
> 
> If you can just use Monticello, I would highly recommend it.  If for 
> some reason, you need to use CVS (hey, we've all worked in places like 
> this :) ) then I would definitely suggest seeing if you can use or tweak 
> MonticelloCVS to your needs rather than reinventing that wheel.
> 
> Julian
> 

-- 
   Julian Fitzell  --  Beta4 Productions
julian at beta4.com  --  http://www.beta4.com
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