[Glass] Recommended IDE / extent if I start a new project today

[Ralph Mauersberger]

Hello everyone,

I have a question about the Community Edition and the recommended way to 
develop for it from today's perspective. I've lost track of which 
development environments are available and currently useful.

Many years ago, I used the Pharo-based GemTools. These have long been 
deprecated. The Tode Project has also disappeared. For the past few 
years, I've been using Jade and have been happy with it. Based on the 
seaside-extent, I was able to develop my projects and use various 
repositories from the GsDevKit ecosystem, such as Zinc, and store my own 
source code in Filetree repositories.

Jade no longer supports the latest product versions. Or is there an easy 
way for everyone to make Jade compatible with the latest versions?

My question is: If I want to start a new Gemstone project today, what is 
the recommended approach? Is the Rowan-extent "ready for prime time"? 
Which UI should I use? Jadeite? Jadeite for Pharo? Jasper? Are these 
projects at a usable stage of maturity, or were there any dead ends or 
abandoned approaches? Anything else? How do I load existing 
Metacello/Monticello-based projects?

I would appreciate it if you could provide the community with an updated 
recommendation and an outlook on the IDE-strategy. Perhaps a blog post, 
documentation, or a YouTube tutorial on "Getting started today" would 
also be great.

If I were to start a new project today, I would use Jade, GemStone 
3.7.4.3 (currently latest supported version), and the seaside-extent. 
But would that be sensible?

By the way, I work on Windows and Linux/WSL and am a Gemstone-only 
smalltalker, so I don't follow the "develop in Pharo, deploy in 
Gemstone" approach.

Thanks in advance and best regards,

Ralph