Pharo in particular, I cannot speak about other Smalltalks I have not used, when it comes to VCS its very similar to git actually. It uses source code files, it distributes them via zip files, it works locally instead of centralised , it support merges etc.
Pharo works well also with usual VCS because it can export code into source code files. The image plays no role in VCS whatsoever because VCS is about code not data and image is mostly about live data and lesser about live code . So any tool will and does work with pharo outside the image. Problem arises with a majority of people that unlike me prefer to stay in the image in that case you gain more control because you have more pharo code to play with but you lose a lot of power because we are a small community not able to compete with behemorth projects like git. Another interesting thing which Pharo does emphasize is remote debugging , though not a Pharo monopoly by a long shot we do have several libraries that can achieve this and because the image format retains live state and live code execution its easy to resolve issues. Besides the image format , the fuel format has the advantage of storing only fraction of the image. You can email this or share it via git or dropbox . Like an image a fuel file is a binary file and like the image it can store live state and live code execution. This way you can isolate live bugs and share them with your team , each one in its own fuel file . Ston is also another alternative format which feels familiar for those that have worked with JSON. In the end there is nothing really special about Smalltalk , you can emulate these features in other programming language especially dynamic pure object orientated ones like Pharo . The difference is that with Pharo you avoid the custom setup, the extra download of tools and libraries and the extra glue code required. Of course the fact that those tool have been around for decades make them more polished and reliable , contrary to modern that promise the sky and the moon and deilvery very little. So overall I will say because of live coding features Pharo is ideal for teams that love to experiment and try ideas on the spot. Especially for bugs that are hard to catch because they appear in random having the ability to debug the live code and live state on the spot can really boost the performance on the team and at the same time utilize all the tool that coders in other languages can use too. On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 12:48 AM horrido <horrido.hobb...@gmail.com> wrote: > There's a debate at Hacker News about how Smalltalk is used collaboratively > in team programming: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642947 > <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642947> > > 'theamk' says: > > Sorry, I am at work right now and don't have time to watch videos. Can you > tell me more about "Smalltalk's own tooling for collaboration and version > control"? Are you referring to Monticello? I am not insisting on git, but > Monticello seems pretty limited in term of collaboration. I see commit, > diff, checkout, and remote pull/push. > > Specifically, let's imagine this scenario: we have team of tens of > programmers working on a project. A new team member joins and accidentally > breaks the code in non-obvious way. He pushes the code to main repository. > Next time, everyone else checks out the latest version of the code and > starts having weird problems. If you had 20 people on team, and they each > wasted 2 hours because the code was broken, well, you just wasted a week of > programmer time. How do you prevent it? > > In file-based word, the answer is tests and CI. What is the smalltalk way? > And please do not say "It's in the conceptual nature of programming" -- if > the scenario makes no sense in the smalltalk world (maybe you are not > supposed to have 20 people working on the same project?) please say this. > > ----- > > How would you respond? I know Smalltalk can be used in large team > programming, but since I personally have no experience with this, I cannot > respond intelligently. > > Thanks. > > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://forum.world.st/Team-programming-with-Smalltalk-tp4934508.html > Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > >
