Am 06.03.2013 um 13:31 schrieb Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com>:

> On 6 March 2013 10:39, Tobias Pape <Das.Linux at gmx.de> wrote:
>> Am 06.03.2013 um 11:09 schrieb Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com>:
>> 
>>> On 6 March 2013 09:30, Tobias Pape <Das.Linux at gmx.de> wrote:
>>> 
>>> There's nothing stopping a package maintainer using Metacello. Perhaps
>>> when Chris & I nag people to make an SM catalog entry we should nag
>>> them to add a ConfigurationOf.
>> 
>> Yes, I think this would be great.
>> 
>>> 
>>> (I used to have a ConfigurationOfControl; I changed it to an Installer
>>> script because the time it took to load Metacello and friends
>>> completely dwarfed the time it took to load Control. Control is tiny
>>> and has no dependencies outside a standard image.)
>> 
>> Did you happen to have Metacello installed before loading the Config?
>> Other than that, I would like to see the config :)
>> 
>>> 
>>> Or do you mean that SM should expose more of what Metacello does, say
>>> by allowing a _user_ (as opposed to my previous
>>> multiple-special-versions) to say "I want Seaside 3.0.3, and I see it
>>> has multiple profiles; I'd like the release one please"?
>> 
>> Kind of like that. I could expose the versions and groups.
>> There is even the possibility to collect the #stable, #development and
>> #bleedingEdge markings.
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> You (the package maintainer, not necessarily you, Tobias) could always
>>> have multiple releases - (4.4 development), (4.4 release), etc. - for
>>> a package. Each of these would have a load script calling
>>> ConfigurationOfFoo
>> 
>> Yes this would be possible.
>> I have two major problems with such an approach:
>> 
>> 1) It is still imperative and you have to manually synchronize the
>> SqueakMap releases with the Metacello configurations. Say,
>> Seaside in 3.0.3 with all its glory is on SqueakMap as about 61 releases.
>> (why so much? see 2) ) When you want to have a 3.0.4 release you have
>> to make 12 new release for 3.0.4. Really?
> 
> Well, leaving aside Seaside, which is a very complicated example,
> "imperative" seems a bit of a misnomer. Let's say I reverse my
> decision and use a ConfigurationOf in my Control load script. There's
> no difference between
> 
>    Installer squeakmap
>        update;
>        install: 'Control (head)'
> 
> and
> 
>    Installer ss3
>        project: 'Control';
>        install: 'ConfigurationOfControl'.
> 
>    (Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfControl) loadDevelopment

Well, undoubtedly, the invocation of the installation is an
“imperative” thing whenever code is involved :)

But the script behind  'Control (head)' is imperative
while the specification in ConfigurationOfControl is 
declarative.

> 
> There is a crucial difference in the general sense, which is that a
> ConfigurationOf allows you to track dependencies, including transitive
> ones. That is a massive win, and swamps the relatively minor issues I
> have with Metacello (like hard-coding where to get one's mcz files).


At a certain point you have to ay where the code is to be found :)
In your install script, it is also hardcoded:

Installer ss3
	project: 'Control';
	addPackage: 'Control-fbs.19';
	addPackage: 'ControlTests-fbs.15';
	install.

In Metacello, you could specify multiple (possibly backup) repositories.

But other than that, I agree with you :)

best
	-tobias