Porting from VW to Dolphin - is the class GUID vital?

Hello all

I am tinkering with the idea of porting some open-source (LGPL) software
from VW to Dolphin. I have compared the XML source of the VW parcel with the
layout of Dolphin packages, and I can see roughly how to produce all the
required Dolphin code except for the class GUID. The VW version seems not to
have (or not to mention) GUID, and the comments in the Dolphin image suggest
that GUID is essential only for COM (which is not involved here). One
reading of the Dolphin comments is that a GUID will be generated when the
class is first filed in. My worry is that the package reader may refuse to
read my generated package file if each class has no GUID. I know the obvious
thing is to try it and see what happens, but I would rather avoid pitfalls
if the collective wisdom of this group can help me to do so.

Of course, the big problem is the translation of the GUI stuff, but that's
another question altogether!

--
Best wishes

Peter Kenny



--
Best wishes

Peter Kenny

Hello Peter:

Peter Kenny escribió:

If you own a PRO edition with STS you can import VW parcels into the
repository and then load them as normal Dolphin packages.

If not, you can use Rosetta ST for the translation of code between
dialects. For small stuff it will work.

<http://rosettast.sourceforge.net/>

> Of course, the big problem is the translation of the GUI stuff, but that's
> another question altogether!

Big stuff, btw.

Best regards,

--
Esteban.

"Esteban A. Maringolo" <[hidden email]> wrote ...

> If you own a PRO edition with STS you can import VW parcels into the
> repository and then load them as normal Dolphin packages.

Esteban

Many thanks for the tip. It was a bit of a struggle (I have never yet
bothered to learn how to use STS) but I got the parcels in. They seem to
have lost package comments, class comments and install scripts, but they are
things I can easily put right. So that has been a very useful start.

Best wishes

Peter

Peter,

> My worry is that the package
> reader may refuse to read my generated package file if each class has no
> GUID.

I don't think there's anything to worry about here.  For a start I don't think
the GUID is used for anything much (if at all).  More importantly for your
purposes, as a package is loaded, it first executes a number of class-creation
expressions like

Object subclass: #Xyz
    instanceVariableNames: 'a b c'
    classVariableNames: ''
    poolDictionaries: ''
    classInstanceVariableNames: ''

As it does that (as you can check by stepping through the above expression in
the debugger) the newly created class is given its own GUID.  It is only later
in the package loading sequence that Dolphin finds and executes the command:

    Xyz guid: (GUID fromString: '{....

So your classes will have GUID whether you ask for them or not.

    -- chris

"Chris Uppal" <[hidden email]> wrote ...

> I don't think there's anything to worry about here.

Chris

Many thanks. I hoped it would be OK, but it's nice to have it confirmed. Of
course, since my first query Esteban has pointed me to STS as a conversion
tool, which should make the GUID issue much easier.

Peter