Hello,
after porting some packages from VW to Squeak and vice versa, I'd like
to write a few random notes about it. Maybe it's helpful for others, or
maybe someone can show me an easier way to port code ;)
The most convenient way to port packages is to use the great
Monticello-Tools that ship with VisualWorks. Michael Lucas-Smith has
recorded two screencasts:
Part 1: Monticello -> Store
http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/20291/Cincom%20Smalltalk/Seaside-20090424-Monticello.movPart 2: Store -> Monticello
http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/20291/Cincom%20Smalltalk/Seaside-20090501-MonticelloPublishing.mov- Loading Monticello packages into VW
The first thing you will need on the VW side is a suitable namespace
which must import all required namespaces. This namespace has to be set
as default namespace of the packages that are ported.
A good example is the Seaside namespace: it imports Grease and SUnit.
When loading a package from Monicello into VW for the first time,
there's a good chance that it will be completely empty. Don't worry -
set the default namespace of the Store package that has been created,
and load the MC package again.
Make sure you load the packages in the correct order - there will be no
feedback if classes could not be loaded.
- Publish Store packages to Monticello
When porting from VW to Squeak, dotted names have to be replaced with
non-dotted ones. Again, default package namespaces help to solve this
problem.
Then there's of course the general problem of portability. I haven't
seen any Lint checks for VW that check the code for portability (similar
to the ones available for Squeak).
There's an issue that methods with non-ISO-characters cannot be ported.
Don't know if that's a limitation of the tools, Squeak or Monticello. If
you do it, the package will be empty when loading it in Squeak.
And finally there's the issue of categories/protocols. VW code that
doesn't have class categories and extension protocols that are suitable
for Monticello will still load, but the result will be a mess.
To make life easier, I modified the Monticello tools a bit. The
modifications are published in the public repository. Changes:
- added a toolbar button to set the default namespace before loading
- protect against non-byte-strings when writing MC packages (by raising
an error ;)
- enforce "*<PackageName>" as category of methods and "<PackageName>" as
category of classes when writing MC packages
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