Smalltalk › Squeak › Squeak - Beginners

Installing packages - not!

_‹ Previous Topic Next Topic _›

Classic

List

Threaded

3 messages Options

Sean P. DeNigris

Installing packages - not!

Administrator

Squeak gurus (I'll have to appeal to the gods next),

I was living the the personal dynamic media dream - new Squeak image, every object alive and available, the digital world was my oyster... until I tried to load some packages...

I just spent a half a day (with much appreciated support from IRC) trying to install packages - and failed at almost every one:

I wanted to install Scamper, but the SqueakMap Package Loader seems to be broken on the current Squeak (downloaded 4.0 from squeak.org). No prob, I'll download metacello from squeaksource - no dice, error there too. Gofer seemed to download okay, but failed some of it's unit tests. Now, I just found the "Package Universe Browser," which I never even heard of before (and I've read every book, wiki, bathroom wall, etc. related to Squeak), but doesn't seem to have any of the latest versions. So much time went by that I actually forgot what I was doing to begin with - oh yeah scamper... I went directly to squeaksource and was totally confused because there were several packages there with no explanation (that I could find) about what each one was, or did, or whether it was even necessary or optional or merely related), so I started loading packages from the Scamper page at random via Monticello Browser, and... it didn't work: Scamper open. -> Error. It was only after a pointer from IRC that I found a different Scamper project that installed okay.

I finally got Shout to install after trying 2 or 3 ways, but no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to install OCompletion.

What am I missing/what is the first choice way to install packages in Squeak? Especially basic developer tools like code-completion and syntax highlighting?

Thanks.

Sean DeNigris

_______________________________________________
Beginners mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

Cheers,
Sean

Bert Freudenberg

Re: Installing packages - not!

On 07.04.2010, at 04:33, DeNigris Sean wrote:

> Squeak gurus (I'll have to appeal to the gods next),
>
> I was living the the personal dynamic media dream - new Squeak image, every object alive and available, the digital world was my oyster... until I tried to load some packages...
>
> I just spent a half a day (with much appreciated support from IRC) trying to install packages - and failed at almost every one:
> I wanted to install Scamper, but the SqueakMap Package Loader seems to be broken on the current Squeak (downloaded 4.0 from squeak.org). No prob, I'll download metacello from squeaksource - no dice, error there too. Gofer seemed to download okay, but failed some of it's unit tests. Now, I just found the "Package Universe Browser," which I never even heard of before (and I've read every book, wiki, bathroom wall, etc. related to Squeak), but doesn't seem to have any of the latest versions. So much time went by that I actually forgot what I was doing to begin with - oh yeah scamper... I went directly to squeaksource and was totally confused because there were several packages there with no explanation (that I could find) about what each one was, or did, or whether it was even necessary or optional or merely related), so I started loading packages from the Scamper page at random via Monticello Browser, and... it didn't work: Scamper open. -> Error. It was only after a pointer from IRC that I found a different Scamper project that installed okay.
>
> I finally got Shout to install after trying 2 or 3 ways, but no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to install OCompletion.
>
> What am I missing/what is the first choice way to install packages in Squeak? Especially basic developer tools like code-completion and syntax highlighting?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Sean DeNigris

To get syntax highlighting etc. you should try the 4.1 release candidate, which has a lot of fixes over 4.0:

http://ftp.squeak.org/4.1/

In general, external packages are in a sorrow state. Only a few are actively maintained. Scamper is not, as you discovered.

Providing a collection of "good" packages with a release is one of the goals of 4.2.

- Bert -

_______________________________________________
Beginners mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

Sean P. DeNigris

Re: Installing packages - not!

Administrator

Bert Freudenberg wrote

To get syntax highlighting etc. you should try the 4.1 release candidate, which has a lot of fixes over 4.0:

I did, and was able to install ocompletion with no problem. Although I realized that there seems to me something missing fundamentally in the way packages are represented. Most of the time, when I go to a repository, I find several packages with seemingly no cohesive information about what they do e.g. for OCompletion there are ECompletion, Ocompletion, OCompletionTests (okay this one is obvious), ExperimentalOcompletion, OCForOB, OCLoader, and Ocompletion-Tests (okay maybe not so obvious - to dash or not to dash...). Now I'm not singling out OCompletion - this seems to be the standard model. My slant is to install the minimum necessary, but am I missing a general practice to install all packages available? Although in the OCompletion example, it does not seem to be the right choice, because ECompletion and OCLoader seem to be either-or.

Bert Freudenberg wrote

In general, external packages are in a sorrow state. Only a few are actively maintained. Scamper is not, as you discovered.

Providing a collection of "good" packages with a release is one of the goals of 4.2.

Thank you for doing that.

Cheers,
Sean