[vwnc] The fun of publishing the base 7.6 to store ...

I've gone through the task of publishing the base and the parcels we
need or may need in the near future. During this process I had some
weird issues, so I would be interested if others can confirm the
following. I describe it as I encountered it. Maybe I got it all wrong,
then tell me and forget the rest of this mail.
This covers the publishing process only, not the upgrade per se.


Many of the Postgresql parcel files show a misleading version number in
the parcel manager. The last published version in our store repository
was "1.3 053", the parcel manager showed that same version, too. But
still there were major differences after the reconcile (Base64Encoding,
Os*, PostgreSQLLogging, Sport). The Info tab of the loaded parcels
revealed through its printStringCache dictionary entry that this version
tag was probably wrong, e.g. the printStringCache showed "1.3 055" or
"1.3 059" which would explain the differences. Somehow the "official"
parcel version string seems to be set the wrong way. Maybe a glimpse in
the packaging process? Whatever.

All COM parcels have completely missed the cleanup task for the version
number. They are all still tagged something like "PreRelease 7.5.1 -
non07.2" or jan08.4 instead of "7.6". I haven't checked if really all of
them were modified from the 7.5 version. I had the impression that some
haven't changed with the new version and only were touched by a complete
publishing.
Some also had differences between this version string and the
printStringCache. The "COM Decompiler" parcel shows version 7.4 (meaning
unchanged since 7.4) while it rather should be "7.5.1 - 1.1 by heeg" and
so should have become version "7.6" for the release.

ThreePaneSelectorsBrowser also shows version 4.10, doesn't reconcile
with 4.10 however, printStringCache reveals version 4.14 xp. I just
checked a reconcile of my loaded parcel with the public rep and it is
4.14 xp, not 4.10 randy.

Sport also doesn't match version 2 which it should be according to the
parcel version, but has no printStringCache to get an idea what other
version it could be (maybe somewhat different because it is a bundle,
not a package). Have to check with public repository.

Although GlorpVWPort is version 7.6 it loads DefaultPackageNameSpace
which has become obsolete, but this is rather a minor info, maybe
intentionally for older vw versions.
VWInstaller has WinProcess as prereq which also has become obsolete.

Some (unchanged) goodie parcels still load obsolete parcels like
RBBaseUI, etc. I know Cincom is not responsible for contributed parcels,
it is just for the completeness of my list. SmaCC is one of the
candidates, and as it has become prereq of other parcels that are
recommended, this comes up rather soon (RB* enhancements). I get the
impression that more and more parcels require such candidates, so maybe
a cleanup would do some polishing for the next release. A lookup of
these obsolete parcels in the path always takes many seconds here (maybe
local network problem, but nasty), so I always get punished for them on
parcel load.

In Short, the major points are

- COM has missed a critical packaging stage
- somehow parcel versions are inconsistent and misleading, why? At least
this should be solved for the next release
- when will RBBaseUI and collegues finally vanish from the parcel prereq
lists

Cheers!

Thomas

Wouldn't it be cute to just import a manager.dat?
Ouch.

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Thanks for the information. A couple of specific points below.

As far as the contributed items (Sport, Postgresql, ThreePaneSelectors, etc.) go, that needs investigating. For most of them we simply use whatever was uploaded to the ftp site by the maintainer. However, a smaller number are directly generated by us. So the problem might be at either end.

All COM parcels have completely missed the cleanup task for the version
number.

Yes. Unfortunately we didn't discover it until post-release.

Although GlorpVWPort is version 7.6 it loads DefaultPackageNameSpace
which has become obsolete, but this is rather a minor info, maybe
intentionally for older vw versions.

This is intentional so that it will load correctly into pre-7.6 versions. 7.6 includes an empty DefaultPackageNamespaces parcel for precisely this reason.

VWInstaller has WinProcess as prereq which also has become obsolete.

That one is probably just a failure to update it.

Some (unchanged) goodie parcels still load obsolete parcels like
RBBaseUI, etc

Again, this is something of a backward-compatibility issue. Once you remove those prerequisites, then they may no longer work in older versions. With them, they work in both older and newer.


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On 08/05/2008, Thomas Brodt <[hidden email]> wrote:
This was a blunder on my part.  I have in the past taken the time to
go through each package and set the parcel version to match the public
Store version, but for the code in VW7.6 I missed that step.  Sorry
:-/

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On 09/05/2008, Bruce Badger <[hidden email]> wrote:
I should add that it would be nice if there were a way of making this
easier, e.g. by having a  choice to set all parcel version numbers to
the current Store version number when publishing a parcel (much as one
can opt to save the Store structure now).

Sam? :-)

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>
> Wouldn't it be cute to just import a manager.dat?
> Ouch.
>


I have an idea: for commercial customers, ie. those who pay royalties, etc.,
Cincom could provide secure access to a Postgresql library containing the
latest release of VW. The benefits to the customers would be enormous. No
more guessing. No more time wasted publishing, patching, garbage collecting
bad versions, republishing.

And Cincom could roll all this out at Smalltalk Solutions '08. Now *that*
would be worth the price of admission.

Charles Adams

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Charles,

Indeed, one could easily replicate the whole thing to their local store
at the time of release, reconcile and be done with it. You could also
deliver patches that way, especially if you had one repository per
VisualWorks release, which would mean that anything new showing up there
is a blessed update.

Cheers!

-Boris

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf the
> latest release of VW. The benefits to the customers would be enormous.
No
> more guessing. No more time wasted publishing, patching, garbage
> collecting
> bad versions, republishing.
>
> And Cincom could roll all this out at Smalltalk Solutions '08. Now
*that*
> would be worth the price of admission.
>
> Charles Adams
>
> _______________________________________________
> vwnc mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc

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Better yet as an SQLite database file; no software install needed just a
DLL.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Charles Adams
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 7:50 AM
To: VWNC
Subject: Re: [vwnc] The fun of publishing the base 7.6 to store ...


>
> Wouldn't it be cute to just import a manager.dat?
> Ouch.
>


I have an idea: for commercial customers, ie. those who pay royalties,
etc.,
Cincom could provide secure access to a Postgresql library containing
the
latest release of VW. The benefits to the customers would be enormous.
No
more guessing. No more time wasted publishing, patching, garbage
collecting
bad versions, republishing.

And Cincom could roll all this out at Smalltalk Solutions '08. Now
*that*
would be worth the price of admission.

Charles Adams

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[hidden email]
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Access to a remote Postgresql repository doesn't even require a DLL. It also has the logistical advantage of not having many different versions of a repository floating around.

I'll note that we have done this, and it's currently available to members of the vw-dev program. It's experimental at this stage, but we haven't had any reports of problems. This either means that it's working well, or that people are asking for it, but not actually using it if it's there :-)

At 11:00 AM 5/9/2008, Joerg Beekmann wrote:

Better yet as an SQLite database file; no software install needed just a
DLL.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Charles Adams
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 7:50 AM
To: VWNC
Subject: Re: [vwnc] The fun of publishing the base 7.6 to store ...


>
> Wouldn't it be cute to just import a manager.dat?
> Ouch.
>


I have an idea: for commercial customers, ie. those who pay royalties,
etc.,
Cincom could provide secure access to a Postgresql library containing
the
latest release of VW. The benefits to the customers would be enormous.
No
more guessing. No more time wasted publishing, patching, garbage
collecting
bad versions, republishing.

And Cincom could roll all this out at Smalltalk Solutions '08. Now
*that*
would be worth the price of admission.

Charles Adams

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