Working with STS and Subversion?

I read that some folks use STS to keep track of minor image changes,
but use the "export to source-code" feature of the environment to to
export to the file-system and then version that code in Subversion.
This way you get very granular system changes within STS, and you can
tag your entire system using Subversion.

What do you think about this? Do you do this? Do you use other
file-based version control systems?

Hello Griff,

> I read that some folks use STS to keep track of minor image changes,
> but use the "export to source-code" feature of the environment to to
> export to the file-system and then version that code in Subversion.
> This way you get very granular system changes within STS, and you can
> tag your entire system using Subversion.
>
> What do you think about this? Do you do this? Do you use other
> file-based version control systems?


Yes I do that - I find it works quite well. In Intelli-Dolphin I enhanced
Sts so that versioning a project also saves it onto the disk - then from
time to time I use tortoise SVN to baseline changes. Remember there is a
PAX format setting for projects which writes things out in smaller files
for easier versioning (however to be honest - tortoise is so good I don't
find I need to use it).

It should be possible to write a tool to run svn from Dolphin so you don't
have to use tortoise and maybe use Ian's diff browser - but I haven't gotten
around to that.

Tim

Hi Tim,

Intelli-Dolphin looks interesting, I haven't heard of it before now.

It is nice to hear that Subversion is a nice solution here.

Do you ever find the need to version the entire image within
Subversion, either in the form of the image itself or exporting
"everything"? Is it common to make changes to the base API?

Hello Griff,

> Hi Tim,
>
> Intelli-Dolphin looks interesting, I haven't heard of it before now.
>
> It is nice to hear that Subversion is a nice solution here.
>
> Do you ever find the need to version the entire image within
> Subversion, either in the form of the image itself or exporting
> "everything"? Is it common to make changes to the base API?

Yes I often version my image (along with change files) with subversion -
backing up your image can save you time if you corrupt it (you can rebuild
it with the package in Sts or any you have versioned) -  but its a lot faster
just to bring back a versioned image.

I forgot to mention - one of the bigger uses for using SVN is that you can
version all the other files that make up your project (e.g. images, notes
etc). While there are mechanisms for storing these as byte arrays in Smalltalk
its a bit awkward - and then you have to write a diff tool if you want to
compare them etc - so I just back them up with SVN like I do with files in
other languages.

As for base API - making changes is normally done by extension (see loose
methods) and as such they get versioned away in your projects. In Intelli,
I make some source changes to the base API (I don't like doing this - but
with things like SUnit getting changes made takes a while) but I do it from
the Intelli Project using a little ustility I wrote called "Environment Patching".
I think a good starting point is to always be in a position where you can
load in packages and rebuild your image.

Tim