That's a good idea. Then every version of Fuel would pass an ever growing set of tests designed to ensure that the "backup" format works as intended.
Hopefully, the format will eventually stabilize. I might be alone in this, but I see serializers as a very simple object oriented database, aka a "free" file format. Yes, one could do much the same thing with an OODMS, but there were reasons to avoid that path, especially at the time we got started. One needs to cope with schema changes (instance variable layout) in the application classes, but that can be done (Object Arts strikes again). *IF* Fuel is to serve a market that archives data, the format needs to be readable well into the future. Bill ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Roberts [[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2011 10:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] When will Fuel file format stabilize? I wonder if it would be possible for you to come up with a separate format, whose purpose was only ever for this purpose. It would not need to be efficient in any respect, just something you could write out to file (say) during the process. It would be a shame to rely on the whole graph needing to be in memory. Maybe something very crude and text based? It could even be considered a debugging format, if it was somewhat human readable. If so, you could easily send this over a socket from an old version of a running system to a newer one, without relying on either serialising format. It could be quite handy. cheers, Mike On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Mariano Martinez Peck <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 12:03 AM, Stéphane Ducasse > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Mariano >> >> >> > No, that's impossible, and if posible, it is not worth it. Migrating >> > from an old format to a new one is extremelly complicated and innecessary. >> > The easiest way to solve this is to take the correct version of Fuel, >> > materialize the graph from the stream, load new version of Fuel, and >> > seriaize it again. That the easiest, more secure, and more practical >> > approach I can see. >> >> It would be interesting to see if you can get two different versions in >> memory :) > > heheh that would be nice :) > >> >> (a need for a module system) > > yep, so far it is not possible. > >> >> so that you can load with one and save with the other. >> >> Stef >> >> > > > > -- > Mariano > http://marianopeck.wordpress.com > >
