[squeak-dev] How can simple version control be implemented for binary objects?

Lawson English lenglish5 at cox.net
Wed Feb 1 17:07:49 UTC 2012


Again, I refer people to the Spoon project.

Lawson

On 2/1/12 5:27 AM, David Corking wrote:
> Although it is not a current area of my personal interest, I want to
> piggyback on the current discussion about configuration management and
> version control with this question, as I think the answer may be
> relevant to future projects, such as rich multimedia applications,
> rich user interfaces, and active essays.
>
> How can simple version control be implemented for binary objects? I am
> thinking of such things as drawings made with the paint tool, and
> audio recorded with the sound recorder, as well as compound objects
> such as texts with embedded images, formatting and hyperlinks: the
> things that web developers call 'assets'.
>
> A reasonable approach seems to be to place an updated image in a
> file-based version control system, and then use scripts to keep source
> code up-to-date (from a Monticello repository) and build releases.
> That requires manual coordination of the assets in a base image.
>
> Another might be to export project files (.pr files also known as
> image segments) into a versioned file system such as a webdav server.
> Is it easy to use assets in project files? I don't know how difficult
> it is to programmatically move objects from project worlds into flaps
> or into other worlds.
>
> Does anyone use more fine-grained controls that allow, say, individual
> morphs or models to be versioned in multi-developer projects? Is
> Morph's fileOut method suitable?
>
> I seem to recall (a year or more ago) that Edgar suggested that such
> an objective may be achieved by extending the project / image segment
> system. Does that still seem reasonable and has anyone made progress
> on that front? Alternatively, is it feasible to extend existing
> Smalltalk config management tools in this direction? (I think
> Monticello already handles rich hypertext in source code comments, so
> could it one day handle more complex objects?)
>
> David
>
>



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