I've been trying to update the NuScratch packages a bit and having 'fun'.

The first problem was simply trying to install the current version; the gpio package has two dependencies and one of them complained that it could not be found. That would be JSON->tonyg.37. Which was a moment's confusion because that is not listed on SM at all, where the versions are 39 a&b. Then I looked at the mcz file in a zip window and noticed that the json tonyg.37 package was included within the mcz, which added some more confusion because it's *right there* so how can it not be found?

After much puzzling I was able to change the dependency to the newer JSON->tony39b and get it uploaded to squeaksource. Anyone wanting a nice monticello project could do worse than improving the tools around those dependencies; we don't see relevant info anywhere except (so far as I could find) in the info window displayed just after saving a package. Nor does it seem we can removed just one dependency out of several.

I then needed to update the SM entry in order to load the updated gpio package. Unfortunately this failed to upload properly  - eventually I got a timeout error, which locked up the image for a couple of minutes before finally returning control to me. It looks like the http://map.squeak.org/accountbyid/4340a66e-2296-48b7-9aa8-5305d303752f/files/install-NuScratchGPIO-Version19.st file didn't get there - attemtping to fetch it results in a 'not here mate' error. Rather confusingly the SM tool does actually show the new version in the list, which isn't reflected in the reality of the web server - opening another image to check in a separate SM catalog shows the lack of the new version. I guess it would be nice to only update the SM tool if the upload is successful.

Two attempts have failed to achieve anything and I don't want to overload the server image if it is having problems. What next?

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Try not to let implementation details sneak into design documents.