[Glass] GsDevKit_Stones, Rowan, Development UI, GIT and all other questions ..

[Marten Feldtmann]

Hello,

due to the changes we have to face in the Gemstone/S development scene,
I would like to ask questions about these new terms. Perhaps the
questions might seems silly or stupid (or "He does not know that ????").

What is Rowan ?

Rowan is a new Project/Package manager for Smalltalk supporting FileTree
and Tonel repositories (https://github.com/GemTalk/Rowan). It seems,
that a Gemstone extent is available with Rowan installed since version
Gemstone/S 3.6.4.

What is FileTree ?

FileTree describes an export format for Smalltalk code. Each method gets
its own file just describing the method. The drawbacks of FileTree: lots
of files, slow. Plus: git.

What is Tonel ?

Tonel describes an export format for Smalltalk code - on a class based
approach. So it reduces the number of files dramatically - but the level
of description is now class oriented.

Which IDE's are supporting Rowan ?

And there should be a UI named Jadeite
(https://github.com/GemTalk/Jadeite) suitable to work with Rowan, which
latest version has been published March/2023 - 3.2.17. This one seems to
be supposed to work with Gemstone/S 3.7.0.

So, what is going today with Jade ?

As I assume, if you want to work with Jade and git - you must define a
GIT repository. Clone it locally on the Gemstone server. Define a
repository with type "filetree" in that cloned repository and then you
have your code in GIT (either via locally commit and/or a push to your
specific git server). More Information are available at:
https://github.com/dalehenrich/filetree.

So I assume, that when working only with filetree repositories in Jade
there should be a smoother jump into the Rowan world ???

What is GsDevKit_home and GsDevKit_stones ?

Both projects located at github and Gemstone/S management tools:
installation, updating, backupand so on. GsDevKit_homes uses a 32bit
Pharo implementation to do the work - and this is getting more and more
difficult today, because all the Linux distributions signal very load,
that the 32bit layers are obsolete in the future.

GsDevKit_stones is a rewrite of that - but with other structures and it
uses Gemstone itself for executing code.

==============

So, now the open questions: What way should a user go ? What is really
working ? What are the ways from now to a git/rowan world ? And which
UIs should be used to develop (and please - what IS available !).

And feel free to add remarks to the points above - I may be wrong when
summarize them

==============

Personal Remark:

Well I have to make a personal remark - Monticelo, FileTree and Tonel
are attempts to store source code of Smalltalk somehow. FileTree and
Tonel are attempts to use the popularity of github (and git). Using the
popularity of git is ok and I can understand that. But none of these
formats of storing source code gives you the power of ENVY, which is now
around for 40 years. I understand, that the younger Smalltalkers have
never seen that and that is a pity. I know from the non-Smalltalker
world, that source code repositories are a no-go. I am still working
with ENVY in VASmalltalk, and it still the most powerful source code
management system I have ever used so far for Smalltalk.

The introduction of Monticello, FileTree and Tonel offers you two
advantages:

* be - in some kind until one of the Smalltalk does change the language
syntax - in a position to exchange the source code between Smalltalk
dialects.

* be prepared to manage non-Smalltalk (icons, documentation, readmes,
...) stuff in your repositoy - the only disadvantage ENVY has.