Installer class side location methods and pbworks.com documentation

Whilst looking into ways to script loading packages I noticed a few items we could probably clean up to benefit the next release

a) the class doc is currently at  http://installer.pbwiki.com/Installer and it is quite old. That doesn't mean it is bad per se but it does mean it likely needs some updates and corrections. There are some 'interesting' related scripts etc that might be useful to look into and either update or remove. I think a lot are completely out of date now.
Note that there is/was a complaint about not using a swiki page (which I'd prefer for less-obscure) because of 'lack of real urls". No idea. Is that actually a problem now?

b) quite a few of the class side methods providing short cuts to repositories are now invalid-
cobalt (no server)
goran (seems not to be a repo any more, lets me into what looks like some fairly private directories)
impara (no server)
keith (no apparent server, also see this rather cool - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrosquyoake_Shire page)
lukas (seems to be very out of date?)
saltypickle (no domain - but it is for sale!)
sophie (no domain - also for sale - whee!)
ssMirror (no server)
swasource (seems to have a squeaksource3 service but nothing in it?)
wiresong (just set as a webdav server?)

I propose copying most of the pbwiki description of the use of Installer to the class method and removing the above list of locations. Can anyone provide further info on the locations and their status?

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: FSRA: Forms Skip and Run-Away

> On 2019-08-22, at 1:19 PM, Keith <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> I think it was http://warwick.st no idea how it got to that wikipedia destination.

Oh the wikipedia page was just a cute thing that came up when searching. But I don't get anything helpful for warwick.st - just "can't find the server warwick.st". Should there be something there?


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Error 13: Illegal brain function. Process terminated.

Hi tim

essentially frozen, but why would that be invalid?
If you want to try Lukas Renggli's stuff, that would be the go-to-location.

> saltypickle (no domain - but it is for sale!)
> sophie (no domain - also for sale - whee!)
> ssMirror (no server)
> swasource (seems to have a squeaksource3 service but nothing in it?)

It works if you know what to install.
I have removed the ss3 project listing and especially the authors listings, as I am unsure what is admissible under the European Privacy regulations.
We use it at HPI primarily for our students' projects, so these must stay private.

However, all the public stuff is still public, just not on the front page.

Currently, that squeaksource hosts over 400 projects.

> wiresong (just set as a webdav server?)

This is valid. It's Colin's repository.

>
> I propose copying most of the pbwiki description of the use of Installer to the class method and removing the above list of locations. Can anyone provide further info on the locations and their status?

>  
>
> tim

Best regards
        -Tobias

> On 2019-08-22, at 7:35 PM, Keith <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> http://warwick.st/udents was from long past era.

OK, so not useful any longer.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- His shared libraries aren't installed.

> On 2019-08-22, at 11:15 PM, Marcel Taeumel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi, all.
>
> #swasource is up and running:
> http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource/MetacelloRepository/ :-)

Ok, BUT we seem to have a problem accessing it.
In a web browser the link you give works to provide a simple directory listing.
In a web browser "http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource/MetacelloRepository.html" gives an actual useful page.
http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource gives plain ss3 homepage
`Installer swasource basicView` opens an empty repository browser, which isn't terribly useful.

So, which path is the best one to have in Installer class>>#swasource ?

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
egret - apology by email

> On 2019-08-23, at 10:20 AM, Tobias Pape <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi tim
>
>> lukas (seems to be very out of date?)
>
> essentially frozen, but why would that be invalid?
> If you want to try Lukas Renggli's stuff, that would be the go-to-location.

True, but is it still interesting enough to warrant a utility link in a system class? And it returns an empty list for
Installer lukas basicAvailablePackages
I'm not suggesting any of the repositories are junk (aside from the ones simply no longer there) but is they no longer respond to the utilities in the Installer classes then they probably shouldn't be listed therein.

>
>> saltypickle (no domain - but it is for sale!)
>> sophie (no domain - also for sale - whee!)
>> ssMirror (no server)
>> swasource (seems to have a squeaksource3 service but nothing in it?)
>
> It works if you know what to install.
> I have removed the ss3 project listing and especially the authors listings, as I am unsure what is admissible under the European Privacy regulations.
> We use it at HPI primarily for our students' projects, so these must stay private.

That's fine, though unfortunate since there is likely intersting stuff.

>
> However, all the public stuff is still public, just not on the front page.

Finding a way to get it listed in response to a #basicAvailablePackages etc would be a bit help. How else are we supposed to find them?


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Diarrhea of the mouth; constipation of the ideas.

Relating to this, does anyone know if there is any point in keeping the InstallerSake and InstallerUniverse classes around? They're sort-of deprecated but were sort-of deprecated in 2008, which is quite a while ago...

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Time to start the War on Errorism before stupidity finally gets us.

That's how Monticello accesses its stuff, directory listings.

> In a web browser "http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource/MetacelloRepository.html" gives an actual useful page.

That's how humans access stuff.

> http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource gives plain ss3 homepage

If you want, we can make an account for you and you can start exploring stuff there :)

> `Installer swasource basicView` opens an empty repository browser, which isn't terribly useful.
>

Because it is not a repository, but a SqueakSource, ie, a collection of repositories.

you might want to do

        `(Installer swasource project: 'MetacelloRepository') basicView`

> So, which path is the best one to have in Installer class>>#swasource ?

The one already there.

Please leave it be, I put it there on purpose.

We had a full list of stuff on the http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/squeaksource/ page
but I have no time to ensure everything is up to legal requirements when I display stuff publicly.

The shortcut is there to install MCZ-files, IMHO not for exploration.
For Example:
The "Metacello Quick Install" project entry features the following code for installation:

        Installer swasource
                project: 'SwaUtilities';
                addPackage: 'ConfigurationOfMetacello';
                install.

        "Bootstrap Metacello Preview, using mcz files (#'previewBootstrap' symbolic version"
        ((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfMetacello) project version: #'previewBootstrap') load.



Thanks and best regards
        -Tobias :)

Hi tim
That's because it isn t a single repository but a collection thereof, just like squeaksource.

If you want to look at his Functional Pattern Matching stuff,  do

        `(Installer lukas project: 'fpm') basicAvailablePackages`

> I'm not suggesting any of the repositories are junk (aside from the ones simply no longer there) but is they no longer respond to the utilities in the Installer classes then they probably shouldn't be listed therein.



yeah, but https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/trac/SqueakCommunityProjects/ is a better staring point.

For most of the software you can't just take the monticello browser and start loading some packages, as there's typically more steps involved to get going.

>
>>
>> However, all the public stuff is still public, just not on the front page.
>
> Finding a way to get it listed in response to a #basicAvailablePackages etc would be a bit help. How else are we supposed to find them?

Note that #basicAvailablePackages doesn't work for `Installer squeaksource` either.
It seems to be repository specific, not repository-collection-aware.
And how could it? We have no canonical way of denoting "this is  a collection of Monticello repositories" to a Squeak image.

Yes, HPI's SqueakSource repos are documented out-of-band (see the Squeak Community Project link above).
I have no intention to re-list stuff at the moment, because I have no time to think through the legal implications (we're in the EU, after all…)

That said, please keep the shortcut :)

Best regards
        -Tobias

PS: you'll notice that some packages on the page, eg, https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/trac/SqueakCommunityProjects/wiki/macros do not even use the shortcut. That's because they were worked on before I put the shortcut into trunk.
We're making heavy use of the shortcut when preparing our biannual Squeak Images for students. :)

> On 23.08.2019, at 20:47, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>
> Relating to this, does anyone know if there is any point in keeping the InstallerSake and InstallerUniverse classes around? They're sort-of deprecated but were sort-of deprecated in 2008, which is quite a while ago...

I'd say purge it :)

> On 2019-08-26, at 1:33 AM, Tobias Pape <[hidden email]> wrote:
[snip]
>  And it returns an empty list for
>> Installer lukas basicAvailablePackages
>
> That's because it isn t a single repository but a collection thereof, just like squeaksource.

Ah, a quick pass in the degubber suggests that something is not working as expected by the package listing code. The repository pointed to by #lukas is MCHttpRepository(http://source.lukas-renggli.ch), which when sent the usual #allfileNamesOrCache returns a reasonable looking list of  stuff like 'magritte3addons/' 'pier/' '/built/oneclick/Pier-1.0-OneClick.zip' 'pieraddons/' 'pier2/' '/built/oneclick/Pier-2.0-OneClick.zip' (just grabbing a few entries from the middle of the list).

However, when the code checks for those results being valid they all fail the test in #isValid., which is why we get an apparently empty list of available packages.

Now the interesting thing is that it looks like this is a general issue for squeaksource and ss3 websites, at least. But my local package-cache MC returns a perfectly good list of packages. It looks like we have a minor design bug getting in the way here; for the `Installer cache availablePackages` case we end up running MCFileBasedRepository>>#validNames: and since the items in the package-cache directory are very 'ordinary' filenames it works.
When trying `Installer ss availablePackages` we still run MCFileBasedRepository>>#validNames: but all the items returned are not at all the same format as package names. They are more like '/@kUVwlQhgbjCHrPSQ/8sV_cJ_-?18' - which I'm going to ascribe for the moment to Seaside. Clearly these sort of 'filenames' aren't going to return true when sent #isValid.

We're well out in the weeds from where I was intending to work on this but maybe someone with interest and experience in details of MC/squeaksource can work out a way to derive more appropriate names. Perhaps a more squeaksource specific repository class could over-ride #allFileNames or #parseFileNamesFromString: (like the file tree specific class does) to solve the problem. At least maybe we could over-ride to deliberately do nothing and not waste time fetching info we know isn't useful.

Generically, surely it would be helpful to have all the repository types able to list what projects/packages they can provide? Nice simple discovery always seems to be useful.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Doesn't just know nothing; doesn't even suspect much.

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 02:03:30PM -0700, tim Rowledge wrote:
>
>
> Generically, surely it would be helpful to have all the repository types able to list
> what projects/packages they can provide? Nice simple discovery always seems to be useful.
>

There are 3382 packages on squeaksource.com. Most are probably student workspaces
or otherwise things of little general interest. Making this discoverable would be
quite a project in itself ;-)

Dave

Well the benefit might be that we discover the useful stuff and delete everything else...


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.

Does anyone remember much about InstallerWeb and what it is intended to do? Right now it seems fairly broken and certainly a bit ... weird.

Unlike most of the repository accessor methods in Installer #web returns the class InstallerWeb instead of an instance of the relevant class. We can 'fix' that fairly easily but it's really hard to see what is meant to happen.

For example the old doc on http://installer.pbworks.com/w/page/19997682/Installer refers to
Installer web url: 'http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/uploads/5889/MakeTestsGreen39.cs'; install.
... which simply can't work because
Installer web
returns InstallerWeb
InstallerWeb url: ...
returns an instance of InstallerUrl
and the `; install` would send the message to InstallerWeb.
Oh well.

Installer installUrl: ... works rather better.

A bit more convoluted is the webSearchPath stuff that looks like it is meant to be a list of urls to look at; it isn't set by default (apparently it used to point to pbwiki?) and in fact the suggested
Installer web url: 'http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/742'; install.
can't work any more because we end up at Installer>>install: where we try to send #scripts - which is not implemented.

So, is InstallerWeb still of value? Anyone care to suggest how to make it work if so?

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Propaganda: a good look

> impara (no server)

impara is no more, but that isn't exactly news...

> sophie (no domain - also for sale - whee!)

so the Bulgarians dropped it too, ey?

I still have copies of the above servers "somewhere".
In case Tim's exercise comes up with a squeaksource server that is actually functional/installable and miraculously
there is some spare time found between the sofa cushions I could try to make the packages available again.
No idea if those would even load in any of the newer images though...

Cheers

Michael

Hi Mike!

> On 2019-08-26, at 6:27 PM, Michael Rueger <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>
>> impara (no server)
>
> impara is no more, but that isn't exactly news...

Sadly true.

>
>> sophie (no domain - also for sale - whee!)
>
> so the Bulgarians dropped it too, ey?

Like a hot ... something Bulgarian and hot.

>
> I still have copies of the above servers "somewhere".
> In case Tim's exercise comes up with a squeaksource server that is actually functional/installable and miraculously there is some spare time found between the sofa cushions I could try to make the packages available again.
> No idea if those would even load in any of the newer images though...

Any chance the packages could just be uploaded to squeaksource.com? Likely not much would still load but there may be parts rescuable.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- One sandwich short of a picnic.