[Glass] Questions about Rowan 3

[Lisa Almarode]

Hi Patrik!  Nice to hear from you.

Rowan is a source code management system, that can be used with Git for 
managing GemStone Smalltalk source code. Rowan 3 means version 3.x of 
Rowan, Rowan 2 and Rowan 1 are also in use; and Rowan is a successor to 
Metacello. Dale can describe the differences between all these in detail.

Rowan is designed to be used with Jadeite, to provide an integrated 
GemStone code development environment. Historically GemStone has not had 
its own GUI, and customers have had to use GBS in a third-party client 
Smalltalk, or Jade, if they did not want to work in topaz.  Rowan itself 
provides much better code management than class-based text files, and we 
have been using Rowan internally for source code management for several 
years. While there have been versions of Jadeite supporting Rowan 1 and 
2, these only run on Windows. A Pharo version of Jadeite for Rowan 3 is 
under development, currently at an early alpha stage.

Unfortunately, Rowan 3 is not currently compatible with seaside, since 
it does not support session methods; and the migration pathway from 
Metacello to Rowan has not been developed. Rowan 3 also needs the latest 
versions of GemStone, since it relies on features added in 3.7 and bugs 
fixed in 3.7.x.

What we are working on that might be helpful for you, is a version of 
Jadeite for Pharo that is usable against extent0.dbf, without needing to 
load all of Rowan into the extent; it uses a Rowan stub to forward 
messages appropriately. This environment would be compatible with a 
seaside or seaside+tODE environment, and existing package management tools.

Let us know if you would like to discuss this in more detail.

Lisa Almarode


On 11/20/2024 3:45 AM, Patrik Svestka via Glass wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I do have some questions concerning Rowan 3. I have searched for them
> myself, but I'm probably missing some pieces to the puzzle.
> 
> This is summary of what I have found out:
>   - Rowan 3 is an OSS code package manager using git as backend
>   - Supports both FileTree (repo info: Monticello repository for
> directory-based Monticello packages enabling the use of different kinds
> of CVS (e.g. git). for managing Smalltalk source code) and Tonel (repo
> info: a file-per-class format for monticello repositories) repositories
>   - Jadeite needs Rowan (3)
> 
> My questions:
>   - What problem are you solving with Rowan 3?
>   - What are the key differences between Rowan 3 and its predecessor(s)?
>   - How to load Rowan 3 to other extent like a seaside one (e.g. for GS
> 3.7.1)?
>   - Is there a possibility to add Rowan 3 to an older GS (extent)?
>   - What are its limitations?