[Glass] What the heck is going on?

Tue Aug 26 11:28:24 PDT 2014

Tobias,

Haha, on re-reading the mail, I can see that I probably came off sounding
like I was complaining a bit more than I intended:)

Thanks for the kind comments!

Dale

On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 10:19 AM, Tobias Pape <Tobias_Pape at gmx.de> wrote:

> Dear Dale
>
> On 26.08.2014, at 14:14, Dale Henrichs <dale.henrichs at gemtalksystems.com>
> wrote:
>
> > A lot of the pain that all of you have been suffering recently is
> because I have been making a concerted effort to transition the GLASS
> infrastructure from a loosely organized collection of blog posts, wikis,
> and monticello repositories to a focussed structure for installation and
> management of GemStone, documentation and related projects based on using
> git/github for collaboration.
> >
> > Collaboration has always been a sticking point for me ... from the very
> beginning of the GLASS project I have always seemed to be the bottleneck
> for getting anything done ... there are lots of reasons why that was the
> case and over the years I have tried a number of different things to make
> collaboration easier and to make things less dependent upon me.
> >
> > I invented Metacello so that I would not be the only person who knew how
> to load a project ...
> >
> > Metacello went a long way, but for me but I never saw the level of
> contribution to maintaining the projects that I wanted ... I have received
> lots of bug reports and complaints about how things are not working over
> the years but I have seen very little in the way of actual contributed
> bugfixes or improved scripts or improved documentation from the community
> itself ... putting some code in an email does not update the package files
> and does not test the fix against all of the supported platforms...
> >
> > At the time that Otto introduced me to the very earliest versions of
> FileTree, I had been studying git and trying to work out a plan to make it
> possible integrate some features of git into Metacello to make Metacello a
> more complete tool..... But Otto's pioneering effort there made it possible
> to actually use git instead of re-implementing git ...
> >
> > Working on FileTree gave me the opportunity to learn about GitHub and I
> saw that GitHub providing collaboration tools that far exceeded anything we
> had available in the Smalltalk community ... 100's of developers routinely
> contribute to projects on GitHub and in Smalltalk it is danged difficult to
> get 3 developers to work together and contribute to the same project ...
> >
> > On github one contributes updates for scripts/code documenation by
> issuing   a pull request. Before integration of the pull request, tests are
> run against the supported platforms If the tests pass and there are no
> issues uncovered during a code review (yes code reviews are very eeay to do
> on github these days) one of the core developers can merge the code into
> the master project with the press of a button on a web page.
> >
> > It was very obvious to me that if I wanted to realize my goal of getting
> off of the critical path for GLASS, I needed to find a way move the GLASS
> project to git/github ...
> >
> > This work started back in 2012 and the work involve major revisions for
> Metacello (Metacello Preview), FileTree, GLASS and a new development
> environment designed to work in a disk-based world (tODE).
> >
> > BTW over these last view years I have used github to successfully
> collaborate with a number of different folks on several different projects
> and I have seen how smooth things can be ... Johan is moving to git/github
> in his own internal development process as well ...
> >
> > The work is nearly complete, but we have entered the painful transition
> phase.
> >
> >  I understand that folks are not going to be able to move overnight to
> these new systems and tools, but the transitions have started Seaside3.1
> and Zinc have been been transitioned to depend upon GLASS1 which means
> that  before trying out these projects you will need to upgrade to GLASS
> 1.0-beta9.3
> >
> > So to avoid future hassles everyone should at least make a plan to get
> themselves up to GLASS 1.0-beta9.3.
> >
> > Besides GLASS 1.0-beta.9.3, I think that folks should understand what is
> going on with the MetacelloPreview and GLASS1.
> >
> > In a nutshell, the MetacelloPreview project is required to use projects
> hosted on github and is itself hosted on github and GLASS1 is the GitHub
> hosted version of GLASS.
> >
> > These two projects differ from other projects because they are
> pre-loaded in your system and the configurations for Metacello and GLASS
> must be loadable in the very oldest of supported versions of GemStone and
> the most recent (2.4.x to 3.2.2). So ConfigurationOfMetacello and
> ConfigurationOfGLASS cannot use the constructs required for loading
> projects directly from github. Consequently I have had to create separate
> configurations.
> >
> > These two projects are bridge projects spanning the old and new ways of
> doing things so it will be a while before I can completely eliminate the
> old projects completely.
> >
> > As I have stated elsewhere, tODE has built-in git/github support and
> tools support for git/github is absolutely required.
> >
> > The final piece in the puzzle is GsDevKit ... GsDevKit provides the
> framework for managing GemStone instances as well as the primary location
> for documentation and references to projects that have been ported to
> GemStone ...
> >
> > In order to survive this transition period we are going to have to work
> together ... if we continue the patterns of the past where folks send me
> email telling me about problems instead of contributing solutions to
> problems then the process will be a prolonged one, because I only have so
> many things that I do in a day and I truly am trying to do my best and I
> know that at times that has not been enough ...
> >
> > To me collaboration means that you have start taking ownership and
> responsibility for these projects ... I have made decisions because
> decisions had to be made ... I have built tools because tools had to be
> made ... I hope that GsDevKit provides a starting point for an evolutionary
> process and I do not want to be the arbiter of evolution ... I have visions
> and Ideas but these are general visions and ideas that without active and
> productive contributions from the community will not survive ... In my
> experience someone has to go around putting flags in the ground in order to
> stimulate action, but please don't consider these flags in the ground as
> being set in concrete.
> >
> > If you do not have the time to contribute then have patience ... but
> please try to make the time to contribute.
> >
> > I don't expect anyone to read my mind so if you want to contribute drop
> me an email and tell me what area you might be interested in. If you have
> questions let's share those in public so I don't have to answer the same
> questions over and over.
> >
> > Can you write documentation? Do you want to fix bugs? Do you want to
> help improve the Squeak/Pharo compat library? Do you want to learn and
> improve about tODE? Do you want to learn about Metacello? Do you want to
> port the latest XML support to GemStone?
> >
> > There are hundreds of things that need to be done from little to large.
> Every piece is important ...
> >
>
> First and foremost, I have to say that your effort enabled me and
> subsequently over a hundred students
> to successfully work in class and develop projects. This alone is a reason
> to say Thank You a lot.
>   Your effort made it possible for us to have all of our class project
> automatically travis-tested
> and well defined in terms of dependencies.
>   Furthermore, for me and a lot of people around me, you have become the
> Face of GLASS and sometimes
> the face of GemStone even.
>
> Where I can help, I will[1].
>
>
> > I guess I've rambled long enough...
>
> Not at all; you typically speak truth, why less of it.
>
>
> Best
>         -Tobias
>
>
> [1] I guess, a SqueakSource->GitHub bridge/helper is due long enough :D
>
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