Hi all, I'd like to give a bit of feeback on the metacello browser. First some context: I am aware of the core concepts of configuration management, but because of lack of time I never got to learn Metacello. So I thought this browser would be ideal for me, I gave it a go, and I'd like to report on my experience.
The first try did not work at all for me, because I started with a configuration that is too complex. So lets start with the second try, something simpler, and first get that sorted out before we do the complex one. Here we go: I have a SqueakSource project TraitsApplication with one package TraitsApplication which contains TraitsApplication and TraitsApplication-Tests categories (and the former contains a TraitsApplication class :-P ). Following the prompts in the browser I was able to make a configuration and save it to SqueakSource, without any real problems. So the cool thing is, I made my first Metacello config today and it even works :-) One issue is how to load my creation. I am used to a big do-it that gets the config via Gofer and contains '(Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfFoo) perform: #loadDefault'. Many configs do it like this, as a user I considered it a standard convention. But this turns out not to work, because no loadDefault has been defined. Perchance I remembered how I had to load MetacelloBrowser '(ConfigurationOfMetacelloBrowser project version: #stable) load' and adapting it to TraitsApplication (not forgetting version:#development) made it to work. So, the question: why is there no #loadDefault generated, nor an obvious way to specify what the default should be? (At least for simple cases of the configuration, like this one) The second issue is the UI. It is confusing at times, there are multiple issues and I list them in random order - Why can I not click on '+Configuration' when there is no configuration selected in the left hand side? - What do the unit-test icons at the left of the configs and baselines-versions-... mean? I turn them green by double-clicking on them, which also gets me an inspector on an empty collection. Huh? - The context menu is too big and confusing. It should be subdivided and ordered by group. Submenus are in order I think. - What are groups? The help menu does not enlighten me. Next up: making a config for AspectMaps (the first thing I tried and that did not work). But this is for another day ... -- Johan Fabry [email protected] - http://dcc.uchile.cl/~jfabry PLEIAD Lab - Computer Science Department (DCC) - University of Chile
