Hi,
this is my (=not canonical) perspective
On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 07:56:19AM +0200, Joachim Tuchel wrote:
Hi guys,
please forgive me if this mail is a sign of ignorance. I am not a
regular Pharo user and one of the reasons for this is that I didn't
like most of the source management tools around Monticello. Coming
from an envy background, it feels like not being ready for prime
time. Of course you guys have been proving you can work with these
tools quite well, but still I'd be interested in using Pharo in a
pure git-based environment, as it most closely resembles some of the
most-beloved features of envy.
Over the years there was a lot of work and discussion on filetree,
gitfiletree, iceberg, cypress and maybe quite a few other projects
that sounded promising and interesting. But I must admit I lost
track of what was really done and how far things went in the last
years.
So are there any pointers to info material that I could look at to
see what the current status of source control in Pharo 5 and Pharo 6
is and/or will be soon?
I am mostly interested in these topics:
* git only - no monticello meta info any more - possible?
first of all -- filetree is an export format which stores Pharo code in an
organized fashion on disk... a folder for every package, folder for every
class, file for every method... e.g.
https://github.com/peteruhnak/pharo-changes-builder/tree/master/repository/ChangesBuilder.package/CBClass.class/instance
this format makes it easier for git to manage the code.
There however two variants of filetree... one containing metacello metadata,
e.g. the red here
https://github.com/peteruhnak/IconFactory/commit/729da03653d527bd6ca34e0a512b1c1c634fd32e
- which caused a lot of pains during merging (because you are almost
guaranteed a merge conflict)... so a new variant emerged which doesn't use this
metadata and instead determines it directly from git versioning.
neither GitFileTree (which is a filetree that performs git commits on the
background) nor Iceberg use monticello metadata.
GFT is still managed via Monticello tools, but the metadata is derived from git
commits. This is what I've been using for ~two years until recently (now I've
switched to Iceberg).
I wrote a guide about GFT some time ago
https://www.peteruhnak.com/blog/2016/07/25/how-to-use-git-and-github-with-pharo/
Iceberg uses the same filetree format as GFT (so they are compatible), but the
tooling inside Pharo has changed. Now there is dedicated iceberg interface for
managing git repositories and projects. Although Iceberg is not in stable yet, so
it breaks from time to time, but when it works I am really happy with it. (Thanks
Esteban & Nico!).
* tools like merge/diff, committing from within the image
Committing from within the image is handled with both GFT and Iceberg; merging
is not yet. (And of course you see diff when committing/comparing versions)
* dependencies within my own project as well as dependencies on
external code in - possibly multiple - external repositories
With git came also the switch from ConfigurationOf to BaselineOf, which
somewhat simplified version and dependency management. The Baseline is no
longer filled with methods for each version, as this is handled by git.
* what is the current "most official" source repository for open
source code?
for Monticello naturally SmalltalkHub/ss3; for git GitHub, however you are not
restricted from other git sites (gitlab, bitbucket, your own server, ...)
* best practices for managing complex projects and keeping old
versions reproducible at any time
well, this is quite general question... I'd say semver.org is a good start,
however most people depend on #stable and #development, which are not actually
versions, so reproducibility is not possible... but there is work being done
iirc regarding better dependency management (Cargo iirc)
* tutorial for git newbies in a Pharo context? (Like, how do I start
with a new packege - create folder first and do git init, or start
in the image and push into repo later? as I said: beginners' stuff)
Chapter 8 of Pharo by example,
https://www.peteruhnak.com/blog/2016/07/25/how-to-use-git-and-github-with-pharo/
and possibly other resources.
Peter
