Hi,
for my work I normally port packages that target Pharo to GNU Smalltalk.
We have fixed some bugs in the gst-convert utility, we have built some
knowledge on common rules but porting and merging is a manual task right
now.
Now Monticello(?) has gained support to use GIT as a target for the package.
While it is great the downside is that each class is a directory and each
selector is a file. An example of such a package is here[1]. I wonder how
we can make the best use of it?
There are several things I would like to discuss that result in tools and
the documentation of best practises for porting.
Today:
Initial:
* Download the latest package from squeaksource/smalltalkhub by hand.
* Create a new git repository...
* Copy the .mcz:snapshot/sources.st to sources.pharo
* Use gst-convert to convert the code to GST (always forgetting that
gst2 is smaller than in gst in version, I should add a gst3 alias)
* Create a package.xml and run gst-package --test.package
* Fix parse issues, fix the STInST parser..
* Fix the .st by hand or use gst-convert with more rules.
Update:
* Take all or just the last version...
* Convert again.. look at it with.. not much 'incremental' work.
Issues with it:
* Done by hand..
* Having to remember/find the rewrite rules all the time
* Incremental updates are difficult
Goal:
* I would like to have an automatic process. Most packages should be
portable with not much work, we should have tools that also ease the
upgrading. This would mean to have a 'PharoExtensions' package and this
should come with conversion rules.
How to move forward?
* Implement/Port Metacello.. and build diffs by hand and then use the
fileout?
* Help building small scripts. Checking in sources.st in a Pharo branch
and creating tags.. and then merging/copying this into a GST branch?
Write scripts that 'sort' code to make diffs as small as possible?
* Or start using git as in monticello/metacello here? Then we would just
modify the code in the single files, create some new packages? We could
build a special package.xml that knows how to collect the files from
such a package directory. The biggest concern is that I would not like
creating a new selector by creating a new file by hand? So maybe we can
have scripts that assemble and split the code?
ideas? comments? volunteers?
holger
[1]
https://github.com/dalehenrich/topez_______________________________________________
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