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Doubled setting for now showing catalog projects in Spotter

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Torsten Bergmann

Doubled setting for now showing catalog projects in Spotter

Hi,

I today wondered as in latest image it was not possible to download projects from Spotter anymore.
The setting for downloading projects from Catalog was enabled.

In latest Pharo 6 there is a new (second and redundant) setting to exclude catalog projects from
Spotter (now provided by the GT tools).

Also it is not implemented very nice:
- it uses reflection and is therefore hard to find (implemented in #catalogSettingsOn:)
- it shows ugly symbols in the settings browser without any description
- while the method is called #catalogSettingsOn: the way it is implemented
it allows to disable ANY GT Spotter extension in the settings browser
as it uses "GTSpotter spotterExtendingMethods". Not very intention revealing.

To me this really looks like a BIG AND QUICK HACK and a solution to a problem that was already
solved before. Please remove it/roll back this unnecessary addition.

Side note:
==========
There ALREADY WAS A SETTING FOR THAT (since Pharo 5 or 4) to not query the catalog (because
a few people lamented before that it slows down when connected with low bandwidth network).

It is implemented in CatalogSettings and you can find it in the settings browser
under "Tools" -> "Catalog" -> "Display catalog projects in Spotter" and is used
in the spotter extension #spotterCatalogProjectsFor:

Second side note:
=================
If the intention was to generally provide an ability to disable any spotter extension
(via reflection) then use #spotterExtensionSettingsOn: instead of the name #catalogSettingsOn:
and set the default to true for the catalog extension.
If you want to disable projects showing up by default in spotter via network connection
than use the one that was already there and set it to false by default.
(which I would not do as network should be fast enough these days for catalog in most places
also catalog is already cached and the call implemented asynchronously, so Spotter opens
right away).

Thanks
Torsten

Tudor Girba-2

Re: Doubled setting for now showing catalog projects in Spotter

Hi Torsten,

Thanks for raising this up. Indeed, this requires a bit of a discussion.

The “ugly” settings are not a hack, but they are indeed not well presented and explained :). We already had an issue with this (https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/18472/GTSpotter-settings-are-unusable), but we are slow in these months because the focus is still to release Moose on Pharo 5 and then we can move all our attention to Pharo 6. I am sorry for that.

The problem that these generated settings solves is that of allowing us to disable any processor we might want without requiring a manual setting for that. This is important in order to strike a balance between extensibility and control.

As I said, I agree that we need to find a way to present these settings better, but they are needed.

Please read this and let me know what you think:
http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/discovering-and-managing-spotter-extensions/

Cheers,
Doru

> On Jul 26, 2016, at 4:49 PM, Torsten Bergmann <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I today wondered as in latest image it was not possible to download projects from Spotter anymore.
> The setting for downloading projects from Catalog was enabled.
>
> In latest Pharo 6 there is a new (second and redundant) setting to exclude catalog projects from
> Spotter (now provided by the GT tools).
>
> Also it is not implemented very nice:
> - it uses reflection and is therefore hard to find (implemented in #catalogSettingsOn:)
> - it shows ugly symbols in the settings browser without any description
> - while the method is called #catalogSettingsOn: the way it is implemented
> it allows to disable ANY GT Spotter extension in the settings browser
> as it uses "GTSpotter spotterExtendingMethods". Not very intention revealing.
>
> To me this really looks like a BIG AND QUICK HACK and a solution to a problem that was already
> solved before. Please remove it/roll back this unnecessary addition.
>
>
> Side note:
> ==========
> There ALREADY WAS A SETTING FOR THAT (since Pharo 5 or 4) to not query the catalog (because
> a few people lamented before that it slows down when connected with low bandwidth network).
>
> It is implemented in CatalogSettings and you can find it in the settings browser
> under "Tools" -> "Catalog" -> "Display catalog projects in Spotter" and is used
> in the spotter extension #spotterCatalogProjectsFor:
>
> Second side note:
> =================
> If the intention was to generally provide an ability to disable any spotter extension
> (via reflection) then use #spotterExtensionSettingsOn: instead of the name #catalogSettingsOn:
> and set the default to true for the catalog extension.
> If you want to disable projects showing up by default in spotter via network connection
> than use the one that was already there and set it to false by default.
> (which I would not do as network should be fast enough these days for catalog in most places
> also catalog is already cached and the call implemented asynchronously, so Spotter opens
> right away).
>
> Thanks
> Torsten
>

--
www.tudorgirba.com
www.feenk.com

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