[Glass] Basic questions regarding GemBuilder for Smalltalk, GemTools, and tODE

Wed Oct 2 07:01:39 PDT 2013

First, I wanted to really appreciate all the answers I got. They were all
very valuable and detailed. Thanks you very much.
It is much clear now.

Dale, I think I am totally confused about tODE. I have just seen the link
you send to slideshare and that's not at all what I remembered about tODE.
That (slideshare) look like a desktop/fat client tool (with remote stuff)
based on Pharo 2.0. But...I remember watching a presentation of you which I
thought it was tODE that was seaside-base. In fact I remember you saying:
"yes, I did it in Seaside because it was easier for me than doing it in
Morphic"...I am just crazy or that was something else?
Ok...I found it: http://seaside.gemtalksystems.com/movies/tODE_intro.mov (I
remember it form the ESUG Innovation Technology Awards ;) )
So...i thought it was seaside-based so I thought it would be easy to run it
inside GLASS, hence you could directly "develop" inside GemStone from any
browser.

Continue discussing about these tools...imagine that I want to browse a bit
and learn about GemStone. I want to see which number classes I have, which
methods each class can answer, etc etc.  You know...explore the system
(forgot for a minute about the pdf documentation). How could I do this
right now (until tODE is released)? GemTools is the only way? well...maybe
the seaside example of the class browser hahah

Thanks,

On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Dale K. Henrichs <
dale.henrichs at gemtalksystems.com> wrote:

> Mariano,
>
> I would second what Otto recommends ... He is living the "develop in Pharo
> and deploy in GemStone" life every day and as such has first hand
> experience and invaluable advice.
>
> GemTools is way past it's "use by date":) and tODE is targetted to replace
> GemTools. When tODE is ready for prime time, I expect to be providing a new
> round of documentation (and tODE scripts) for working with GLASS. At worst,
> tODE will be a better option than topaz, at best ... well, we'll just have
> to see:) Until then, tODE is still in development, so I would not recommend
> that you try using it.
>
> I encourage Otto (and others ... hint, hint) to share more about their
> processes and procedures ...
>
> Dale
> ----- Original Message -----
> | From: "Otto Behrens" <otto at finworks.biz>
> | To: "Mariano Martinez Peck" <marianopeck at gmail.com>
> | Cc: glass at lists.gemtalksystems.com
> | Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2013 8:28:30 AM
> | Subject: Re: [Glass] Basic questions regarding GemBuilder for Smalltalk,
> GemTools, and tODE
> |
> | Mariano,
> |
> | We've been running a Seaside 3 / Magritte 3 app on GS for a while
> | now.
> |
> | We develop in Pharo 1.4 (suppose that could be 2). The application
> | works in Pharo 1.4, almost all tests run in Pharo 1.4. There are a
> | few
> | very small tests that we run in GemStone only, but to be honest I had
> | to search for them now because I could not remember - so we rarely
> | touch them.
> |
> | We then write the code to filetree and use filetree to load back into
> | GS via topaz.
> |
> | The only thing we use GemTools for is to hunt for bugs. If we really
> | can't understand why the app works in Pharo and not in GS, we use
> | GemTools to set a breakpoint and figure out what's going on. Once we
> | know, we exit GemTools and write code in Pharo. Sometimes we edit
> | code
> | using GemTools just to see how something will work if it is that
> | specific to GS. Also, sometimes, it helps to inspect data objects
> | which we only have in a GS DB.
> |
> | We do not even use GemTools to work on remote GS instances. We only
> | use topaz for that. Topaz is good enough for most things. In 6 years,
> | it happened about 2 times that we made a backup of the production DB,
> | copy it local and then use GemTools to debug.
> |
> | I would not consider using a GBS based tool, I would just develop in
> | Pharo, given that you know Pharo pretty well. GemTools is not
> | workable
> | as a development tool. And I can't imagine that tODE is. That is if
> | you use refactoring tools, customise your image and run things like
> | lint.
> |
> | Some more answers below:
> |
> | > that running tODE in GemStone could give us the
> | > functionality we now have in GemTools?
> |
> | I think so. I think that the energy that would have to go into tODE
> | to
> | make it more than that would be enormous, but then I would be glad to
> | hear otherwise.
> |
> | > Now that I have this thread already open ;) I wonder if someone has
> | > ever
> | > written some "port rules" or things to be aware when deploying to
> | > GemStone.
> | > I guess certain Pharo kernel classes/methods may not exist or
> | > answer
> | > something different, etc... And I think the answer would be around
> | > Grease?
> | > In other words, what I ask is the following: imagine (it is not the
> | > case
> | > unfortunately) I don't use any other library than seaside/magritte.
> | > What are
> | > the things that would make the port to gemstone complicated? Is
> | > there any
> | > list or conventions somewhere?
> |
> | We've used Grease and have some stuff that we did before grease
> | existed. And we've not been good at contributing stuff. Mainly
> | because
> | we get under pressure and then soon fall behind, sticking to older
> | versions. Upgrading is costly. Not sure how to improve this
> | situation.
> |
> | Having said this, we're willing to help and give anyone stuff we've
> | done to make the port easier. It is not that onerous. Dale and others
> | have done a lot; just to get Seaside into GS extended a lot of GS
> | kernel classes to be Pharo / Seaside compatible.
> |
> | We have 2 Metacello configs. The one called "Runtime" loads all the
> | Seaside / Magritte / Whatever tools we use from the community, with
> | some differences between what we load into GS / Pharo. The other is
> | our own project that is dependent on Runtime, also with small
> | compatibility changes between the different environments.
> |
> | Please let me know where I can give you more info or code.
> |
> | Cheers
> | Otto
> | _______________________________________________
> | Glass mailing list
> | Glass at lists.gemtalksystems.com
> | http://lists.gemtalksystems.com/mailman/listinfo/glass
> |
>

-- 
Mariano
http://marianopeck.wordpress.com
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