On 19-Aug-09, at 5:45 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:

> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/584
>
> The idea is to be more like the Etoys users which can load binary
> projects containing not only the code they need but also hand crafted
> objects which have no source (like a drawing, some nested Morphs or  
> even
> some text). This is very simplistic compared to Spoon, and my proposal
> was even more simplistic. In particular, this doesn't handle the case
> where any changes to bytecodes or object format are needed.

Interesting.

I note, though, that the wiki page you mention doesn't actually say  
much about development. It's mostly concerned with efficient ways of  
moving objects between images. Reliably reconstructing part of one  
image in another is certainly a crucial part of collaborative  
development, but it's not everything.

The other key feature of Monticello is merging. If you and I have the  
same chunk in different image, and we make differing but compatible  
changes, how can we create a chunk that contains both sets of changes?  
I submit that any tool that can do that will have explicit knowledge  
of the semantics of objects it's merging, whether Smalltalk code,  
Etoys projects or something else.

So the wonderful generality of the Chunky Images idea only gets you so  
far, and you still need a tool like Monticello to actually create  
collaboratively. In Monticello 2 I've tried to address this idea  
explicitly: the core versioning engine is knows nothing about the  
semantics of the objects it's versioning, but it does rely on  
pluggable domain models that do.

Colin