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Siemen Baader

simpler install & deploy

Hi Amber Devs (& users),

What are your thoughts about Bower, installation, dependencies etc?

I've got a feeling that a lot of work is put into making amber follow the latest, coolest automation and package management systems (bower, require's AMD etc, grunt), but that despite best intentions it all ends up introducing a lot of extra dependencies and complexity that we users have to deal with. I know that in theory these tools make it all easy and users should never need to see them, but in practice there are always bugs and these complexities bubble up.

It's a bit like Eclipse and the Java toolstack - you cannot simply write a text file with "puts 'Hello world'" in it, you need to deal with a lot of boilerplate (and tools to move boilerplate around) before you have access to the things that are conceptually interesting.

What is the end goal? To convert JS devs to use Smalltalk? Or to provide access to HTML5 for Smalltalkers?

I am in the latter camp. I am building a research application, and I use Amber because I need a live coding environment, and because I need HTML & CSS to create UIs. I need students to use it, and for that the system needs to be as simple to set up & get started with as Ruby.

Can we think of ways to eliminate complexity in installation & deployment, rather than automating it away, and still keep the benefits of the good parts of the web ecosystem and its libs?

I think within the IDE, that has been done brilliantly - the MVC-like widgets and the WebCanvas DSL html generating are conceptually much simpler and more expressive than templating languages (like Mustache) and JS MVVM frameworks (like Backbone.js).

best,
Siemen

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philippeback

Re: simpler install & deploy

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Siemen Baader <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Amber Devs (& users),

What are your thoughts about Bower, installation, dependencies etc?

I've got a feeling that a lot of work is put into making amber follow the latest, coolest automation and package management systems (bower, require's AMD etc, grunt), but that despite best intentions it all ends up introducing a lot of extra dependencies and complexity that we users have to deal with. I know that in theory these tools make it all easy and users should never need to see them, but in practice there are always bugs and these complexities bubble up.

Well, I used to feel like that. But... when you do any work that requires lots of js libraries, bower is a godsend. It appears to be need node.js - be it.

If one is doing work in the current HTML5 space and doesn't know about bower etc, well, that person will better start running.

It's a bit like Eclipse and the Java toolstack - you cannot simply write a text file with "puts 'Hello world'" in it, you need to deal with a lot of boilerplate (and tools to move boilerplate around) before you have access to the things that are conceptually interesting.

What is the end goal? To convert JS devs to use Smalltalk? Or to provide access to HTML5 for Smalltalkers?

I am in the latter camp. I am building a research application, and I use Amber because I need a live coding environment, and because I need HTML & CSS to create UIs. I need students to use it, and for that the system needs to be as simple to set up & get started with as Ruby.

Can we think of ways to eliminate complexity in installation & deployment, rather than automating it away, and still keep the benefits of the good parts of the web ecosystem and its libs?

That is very much possible. Maybe a kind of "Amber portable" version would help in your scenario.

How hard would this be to do? I mean just to allow one to develop right out of the box without doing anything more than untarring/unzipping a file in a directory?

I guess we would have to install all of node/npm/bower things locally.

Phil

I think within the IDE, that has been done brilliantly - the MVC-like widgets and the WebCanvas DSL html generating are conceptually much simpler and more expressive than templating languages (like Mustache) and JS MVVM frameworks (like Backbone.js).

best,
Siemen

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Herby Vojčík

Re: simpler install & deploy

[hidden email] wrote:
> That is very much possible. Maybe a kind of "Amber portable" version
> would help in your scenario.
>
> How hard would this be to do? I mean just to allow one to develop
> right out of the box without doing anything more than
> untarring/unzipping a file in a directory?
> I guess we would have to install all of node/npm/bower things locally.

Well, this is possible. Take WebStorm (IDEA series IDE for JS): it has installer which installs its own private JRE and all and then just works (but if you want to use git, node etc. you must install it separately anyway, though it does hard to find them for you).

So there may be an installer package that installs node, npm and git locally. But it takes time to make it (especially for Windows).

I already wrote we can make scripts that do all this installation of prerequsities (and amber itself) for you. But again, installing node unattended at Windows - _I_ personally don't know how to do it.

So I'd ra
ther try to convince the user to install themselves. npm -g install amber-cli and amber init hides the bower details from the user to make start smoother. amber config is on its way to make combining libraries and creating requirejs mapping as easy as running amber config.

But as Phil has written, it's good to use the JS ecosystem tools when you're there. And with browser apps, you are.

> Phil

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Manfred Kröhnert

Re: simpler install & deploy

In reply to this post by philippeback

Hi,

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 11:38 AM, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Siemen Baader <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Amber Devs (& users),

What are your thoughts about Bower, installation, dependencies etc?

I've got a feeling that a lot of work is put into making amber follow the latest, coolest automation and package management systems (bower, require's AMD etc, grunt), but that despite best intentions it all ends up introducing a lot of extra dependencies and complexity that we users have to deal with. I know that in theory these tools make it all easy and users should never need to see them, but in practice there are always bugs and these complexities bubble up.

Well, I used to feel like that. But... when you do any work that requires lots of js libraries, bower is a godsend. It appears to be need node.js - be it.
If one is doing work in the current HTML5 space and doesn't know about bower etc, well, that person will better start running.

I recently read this article about npm packages: http://www.rudeshko.com/web/2014/05/13/help-people-consume-your-npm-packages.html

It talks about npm packages, their dependencies and if they should be commited to the repo or not.

If we haven't already done so (herby?) maybe we can consider some of the presented statements.

It's a bit like Eclipse and the Java toolstack - you cannot simply write a text file with "puts 'Hello world'" in it, you need to deal with a lot of boilerplate (and tools to move boilerplate around) before you have access to the things that are conceptually interesting.

What is the end goal? To convert JS devs to use Smalltalk? Or to provide access to HTML5 for Smalltalkers?

I am in the latter camp. I am building a research application, and I use Amber because I need a live coding environment, and because I need HTML & CSS to create UIs. I need students to use it, and for that the system needs to be as simple to set up & get started with as Ruby.

Can we think of ways to eliminate complexity in installation & deployment, rather than automating it away, and still keep the benefits of the good parts of the web ecosystem and its libs?

That is very much possible. Maybe a kind of "Amber portable" version would help in your scenario.

How hard would this be to do? I mean just to allow one to develop right out of the box without doing anything more than untarring/unzipping a file in a directory?

I guess we would have to install all of node/npm/bower things locally.

Maybe the atom-shell can be used for something like this:

https://github.com/atom/atom-shell/tree/master/docs

Anyone up to give it a try?

Unfortunately this is currently not possible for me.

Best,

Manfred

Phil

I think within the IDE, that has been done brilliantly - the MVC-like widgets and the WebCanvas DSL html generating are conceptually much simpler and more expressive than templating languages (like Mustache) and JS MVVM frameworks (like Backbone.js).

best,
Siemen

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Herby Vojčík

Re: simpler install & deploy

In reply to this post by Siemen Baader

As for including node_modules into repo, the recap says clearly "app [my note: as opposef to lib] developers, push node_modules into the repo". But Amber is not an app, it's much more a lib.

As for the other thing - do not put the development artifacts into the package - I issued s PR that does exactly that just a few days ago, but Nico wasn't very happy about it (it also moved few items around to more clearly separate development artifacts from Amber payload). If you want to support it, you can add your opinion in the comments.

Manfred Kröhnert <[hidden email]>napísal/a:

Hi,

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 11:38 AM, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Siemen Baader <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi Amber Devs (& users),

What are your thoughts about Bower, installation, dependencies etc?

I've got a feeling that a lot of work is put into making amber follow the latest, coolest automation and package management systems (bower, require's AMD etc, grunt), but that despite best intentions it all ends up introducing a lot of extra dependencies and complexity that we users have to deal with. I know that in theory these tools make it all easy and users should never need to see them, but in practice there are always bugs and these complexities bubble up.

Well, I used to feel like that. But... when you do any work that requires lots of js libraries, bower is a godsend. It appears to be need node.js - be it.
If one is doing work in the current HTML5 space and doesn't know about bower etc, well, that person will better start running.

I recently read this article about npm packages: http://www.rudeshko.com/web/2014/05/13/help-people-consume-your-npm-packages.html

It talks about npm packages, their dependencies and if they should be commited to the repo or not.

If we haven't already done so (herby?) maybe we can consider some of the presented statements.

It's a bit like Eclipse and the Java toolstack - you cannot simply write a text file with "puts 'Hello world'" in it, you need to deal with a lot of boilerplate (and tools to move boilerplate around) before you have access to the things that are conceptually interesting.

What is the end goal? To convert JS devs to use Smalltalk? Or to provide access to HTML5 for Smalltalkers?

I am in the latter camp. I am building a research application, and I use Amber because I need a live coding environment, and because I need HTML & CSS to create UIs. I need students to use it, and for that the system needs to be as simple to set up & get started with as Ruby.

Can we think of ways to eliminate complexity in installation & deployment, rather than automating it away, and still keep the benefits of the good parts of the web ecosystem and its libs?

That is very much possible. Maybe a kind of "Amber portable" version would help in your scenario.

How hard would this be to do? I mean just to allow one to develop right out of the box without doing anything more than untarring/unzipping a file in a directory?

I guess we would have to install all of node/npm/bower things locally.

Maybe the atom-shell can be used for something like this:

https://github.com/atom/atom-shell/tree/master/docs

Anyone up to give it a try?

Unfortunately this is currently not possible for me.

Best,

Manfred

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Nicolas Petton

Re: simpler install & deploy

Herby Vojčík <[hidden email]> writes:

> As for the other thing - do not put the development artifacts into the
> package - I issued s PR that does exactly that just a few days ago,
> but Nico wasn't very happy about it (it also moved few items around to
> more clearly separate development artifacts from Amber payload). If
> you want to support it, you can add your opinion in the comments.

It's not that I wasn't happy about it, but more that I'm still thinking
about it :) We should discuss it.

Cheers,
Nico

>
>
> Manfred Kröhnert <[hidden email]>napísal/a:
>
>>Hi,OnThu,May15,2014at11:38AM,[hidden email]@highoctane.bewrote:OnThu,May15,2014at11:25AM,[hidden email]:HiAmberDevs(users),WhatareyourthoughtsaboutBower,installation,dependenciesetc?Ivegotafeelingthatalotofworkisputintomakingamberfollowthelatest,coolestautomationandpackagemanagementsystems(bower,requiresAMDetc,grunt),butthatdespitebestintentionsitallendsupintroducingalotofextradependenciesandcomplexitythatweusershavetodealwith.Iknowthatintheorythesetoolsmakeitalleasyandusersshouldneverneedtoseethem,butinpracticetherearealwaysbugsandthesecomplexitiesbubbleup.Well,Iusedtofeellikethat.But...whenyoudoanyworkthatrequireslotsofjslibraries,bowerisagodsend.Itappearstobeneednode.js-beit.IfoneisdoingworkinthecurrentHTML5spaceanddoesntknowaboutboweretc,well,thatpersonwillbetterstartrunning.Irecentlyreadthisarticleaboutnpmpackages:http://www.rudeshko.com/web/2014/05/13/help-people-consume-your-npm-packages.htmlIttalksaboutnpmpackages,theirdependenciesandiftheyshouldbecommitedtotherepoornot.Ifwehaventalreadydoneso(herby?)maybewecanconsidersomeofthepresentedstatements.ItsabitlikeEclipseandtheJavatoolstack-youcannotsimplywriteatextfilewithputsHelloworldinit,youneedtodealwithalotofboilerplate(andtoolstomoveboilerplatearound)beforeyouhaveaccesstothethingsthatareconceptuallyinteresting.Whatistheendgoal?ToconvertJSdevstouseSmalltalk?OrtoprovideaccesstoHTML5forSmalltalkers?Iaminthelattercamp.Iambuildingaresearchapplication,andIuseAmberbecauseIneedalivecodingenvironment,andbecauseIneedHTMLCSStocreateUIs.Ineedstudentstouseit,andforthatthesystemneedstobeassimpletosetupgetstartedwithasRuby.Canwethinkofwaystoeliminatecomplexityininstallationdeployment,ratherthanautomatingitaway,andstillkeepthebenefitsofthegoodpartsofthewebecosystemanditslibs?Thatisverymuchpossible.MaybeakindofAmberportableversionwouldhelpinyourscenario.Howhardwouldthisbetodo?Imeanjusttoallowonetodeveloprightoutoftheboxwithoutdoinganythingmorethanuntarring/unzippingafileinadirectory?Iguesswewouldhavetoinstallallofnode/npm/bowerthingslocally.Maybetheatom-shellcanbeusedforsomethinglikethis:https://github.com/atom/atom-shell/tree/master/docsAnyoneuptogiveitatry?Unfortunatelythisiscurrentlynotpossibleforme.Best,Manfred<span

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Nicolas Petton
http://nicolas-petton.fr

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