I just upgraded to the newest version of Pharo Smalltalk. Before doing so, I "File-outed" a package from my old version called My-Pharo - a package I use for various configurations and customizations of Pharo itself, most notably a class to put back "Workspace" in the main menu. I then "File-ined/Installed" the file into my new version.
When I checked the SystemBrowser, I had correctly gotten the My-Pharo package, but I'd also picked up a package called My-Pharo-Manifest... I see My-Pharo-Manifest actually is part of my File-Out, and seems to contain the package-comment for My-Pharo .
What is this manifest, what is it's purpose, and how should it be used? Is there something I can/should do to "merge" the manifest (ie. the comment) back into the My-Pharo class? Should I move the content of My-Pharo-Manifest somewhere else? ...Or is my best bet to simply delete the Manifest-package, and re-write the package-comment for My-Pharo?
I'm not a seasoned Pharo developer, I use it just time to time. I'll try to answer your question from the source code. For more detailed answer you would have to get it from the ones that are actually do the development of Pharo.
What is manifest?
Manifest contains package metadata.
what is it's purpose?
The purpose is to make life easier for the SmallLint (Smalltalk Code Critics). It is there for its speedup, because without the manifest the SmallLint would have to check the rule results all the time. Package metadata helps in managing false positives and/or TODOs.
packages: If you check for the where is the #hasPackageNamed: used, you will find out that it is at SmallLintManifestChecker>>manifestBuilderOfPackage:.
methods: if you search for #hasManifestFor: SmallLintManifestChecker>>manifestBuilderOfMethod:
Is there something I can/should do to "merge" the manifest (ie. the
comment) back into the My-Pharo class? Should I move the content of
My-Pharo-Manifest somewhere else?
I would just leave it be. It helps the SmallLint to do its job.
Related
I've been trying to set up a WiX component such that the user can specify that the installer should not upgrade that component on a MajorUpgrade. I had the following code, but this means that if the condition is met then the new version is not installed, but the old version is also removed.
<Component Id="ExampleComponent" GUID="{GUID here}">
<Condition>NOT(KEEPOLDFILE="TRUE")</Condition>
<File Id="ExampleFile" Name="File.txt" KeyPath="yes" Source="File.txt"/>
</Component>
Ideally, if the user specifies "KEEPOLDFILE=TRUE", then the existing version of "File.txt" should be kept. I've looked into using the Permanent attribute, but this doesn't look relevant.
Is this possible to achieve without using CustomActions?
A bit more background information would be useful, however:
If your major upgrade is sequenced early (e.g. afterInstallInitialize) the upgrade is an uninstall followed by a fresh install, so saving the file is a tricky proposition because you'd save it, then do the new install, then restore it.
If the upgrade is late, then file overwrite rules apply during the upgrade, therefore it won't be replaced anyway. You'd need to do something such as make the creation and modify timestamps identical so that Windows will overwrite it with the new one. The solution in this case would be to run a custom action conditioned on "keep old file", so you'd do the reverse of this:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/astebner/2013/05/23/updating-the-last-modified-time-to-prevent-windows-installer-from-updating-an-unversioned-file/
And it's also not clear if that file is ALWAYS updated, so if in fact it has not been updated then why bother to ask the client whether to keep it?
It might be simpler to ignore the Windows Installer behavior by setting its component id to null, as documented here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa368007(v=vs.85).aspx
Then you can do what you want with the file. If you've already installed it with a component guid it's too late for this solution.
There are better solutions that require the app to get involved where you install a template version of this file. The app makes a copy of it that it always uses. At upgrade time that template file is always replaced, and when the app first runs after the upgrade it asks whether to use the new file (so it copies and overwrites the one it was using) or continue to use the existing file. In my opinion delegating these issues to the install is not often an optimal solution.
Setting attributes like Permanent is typically not a good idea because they are not project attributes you can turn on and off on a whim - they apply to that component id on the system, and permanent means permanent.
I tried to make this a comment, it became to long. I prefer option 4 that Phil describes. Data files should not be meddled with by the setup, but managed by your application exe (if there is one) during its launch sequence. I don't know about others, but I feel like a broken record repeating this advice, but hear us out...
There is a description of a way to manage your data file's overwriting or preservation here. Essentially you update your exe to be "aware" of how your data file should be managed - if it should be preserved or overwritten, and you can change this behavior per version of your application exe if you like. The linked thread describes registry keys, but the concept can be used for files as well.
So essentially:
Template: Install your file per-machine as a read-only template
Launch Sequence: Copy it in place with application.exe launch sequence magic
Complex File Revision: Update the logic for file overwrite or preservation for every release as you see fit along the lines as the linked thread proposes
Your setup will "never know" about your data file, only the template file. It will leave your data file alone in all cases. Only the template file it will deal with.
Liberating your data files from the setup has many advantages:
Setup.exe bugs: No unintended accidental file overwrites or file reset problems from problematic major upgrade etc... this is a very common problem with MSI.
Setup bugs are hard to reproduce and debug since the conditions found on the target systems can generally not be replicated and debugging involves a lot of unusual technical complexity.
This is not great - it is messy - but here is a list of common MSI problems: How do I avoid common design flaws in my WiX / MSI deployment solution? - "a best effort in the interest of helping sort of thing". Let's be honest, it is a mess, but maybe it is helpful.
Application.exe Bugs: Keep in mind that you can make new bugs in your application.exe file, so you can still see errors - obviously. Bad ones too - if you are not careful - but you can easily implement a backup feature as well - one that always runs in a predictable context.
You avoid the complicated sequencing, conditioning and impersonation concerns that make custom actions and modern setups so complicated to do right and make reliable.
Following from that and other, technical and practical reasons: it is much easier to debug problems in the application launch sequence than bugs in your setup.
You can easily set up test conditions and test them interactively. In other words you can re-create problem conditions easily and test them in seconds. It could take you hours to do so with a setup.
Error messages can be interactive and meaningful and be shown to the user.
QA people are more familiar with testing application functionality than setup functionality.
And I repeat it: you are always in the same impersonation context (user context) and you have no installation sequence to worry about.
Is there any reason to keep elm-stuff/build-artifacts under version control? I was thinking I'd add it to my .gitignore, since it seems to change every time my .elm file changes.
(This project ignores the whole elm-stuff folder, but that seems wrong to me because exact-dependencies.json is in there.)
The content of elm-stuff gets generated from your source code so it's generally safe to ignore it's content.
For your question about committing exact-dependencies.json or not I think you should look at what the Rust community suggests for their equivalent cargo.lock.
If you're building an application and if you care about deterministic builds then it's better to commit it. If you are writing a library it's better to leave dependency resolution to the application that is using the library.
Note that Elm enforces semantic versioning so you can have the guarantee that a package upgrade is not going to break your build. That doesn't prevent change in the behaviour, that's why if you want deterministic builds you should commit your exact-dependencies.json.
I have been reading about semver. I really like the general idea. However, when it comes to putting it to practice, I feel like I'm missing some key pieces of information. I'm not sure where the name of a library exists, or what to do with file variants. For instance, is the file name something like [framework]-[semver].min.js? Are there popular JavaScript frameworks that use semver? I don't know of any.
Thank you!
Let me try to explain you.
If you are not developing a library that you like to keep for years to come, don't bother about it.. If you prefer to version every development, read the following.
Suppose you are an architect or developer developing a library that is aimed to be used by hundreds of developers over time, in a distributed manner. You really need to be cautious of what you are doing, what your developers are adding (so interesting features that grabs your attention to push those changes in the currently distributed file). You dont know how do you tell your library users to upgrade. In what scenarios? People followed some sort of versioning, and interestingly, their thoughts all are working fine.
Then why do you need semver ?
It says "There should be a concrete specification for anything for a group of people to follow anything collectively, even though they know it in their minds". With that thought, they made a specification. They have made their observation and clubbed all the best practices in the world about versioning software mainly, and given a single website where they listed them. that is semver.org. Its main principles are :
Imagine you have already released your library with a version "lib.1.0.98", Now follow these rules for subsequent development.
Let your library is bundled and named as xyz and,
Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, (like xyz.MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH), increment the:
1. MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes
(existing code of users of your library breaks if they adapt this without code changes in their programs),
2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner
(existing code works, and some improvements in performance and features also), and
3. PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.
Additional labels for pre-release and build metadata are available as extensions to the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format.
If you are not a developer or are not in a position to develop a library of a standard, you need not worry at all about semver.
Finally, the famous [d3] library follows this practice.
Semantic Versioning only defines how to name your versions. It does not specify what you will do with your version number afterwards. You can put the version numbers in package names, you can store it in a properties file inside your application, or just publish it in a wiki. All those options are opened to discussion and not part of the problem space addressed by SemVer.
semver is used by npm and bower (and perhaps some other tools) for dependency management. Using semver it is possible to decide which versions of which packages to use if multiple libraries used depend on the same library.
As others have said, semantic versioning is a standard versioning scheme that tells your users which versions of your library should be compatible with each other, and which ones are not.
The idea, is to be able to give your users more confidence that it's safe to upgrade to a newer patch/version, because it's tried, tested, and true to being backwards compatible with the previous version (minor increments). That is, perceptively that's what your telling your users.
As far as tooling goes, I don't do much in javascript, but I typically let my build server handle stamping my assemblies etc with the correct version. I have a static major number I upgrade whenever I make breaking changes, a static minor number I upgrade everytime I add new features, and an auto-incrementing Patch number whenever I checkin bug fixes.
Especially if this is a javascript library you plan to share on a public repository of some kind (nuget, gem, etc) you probably want some for of automated packaging system, and you put the logic in there for specifying your version number (in the package meta data, in the name of the javascript file, which is typically the standard I've seen).
Take a look at sbt which is the Scala Build Tool. In it, we write dependencies like this:
val scalatest = "org.scalatest" %% "core" % "2.1.7" "test"
val jodatime = "org.joda" % "jodatime" % "1.4.5"
Wherein the operator %% means "the current version of Scala that you're building." Packaging things in this language generally create JAR files with the name like this <my project>_<scala version>_<library version>.jar which is quite handy for semantically naming things automagically. The % operator can be interpreted as "don't version this part."
That said, this resulted from the fact that the same library compiled to different Scala versions were not binary compatible with each other. So it was more as a result of, rather than a conscious design choice, the binary incompatibilities.
Xcode has a habit of putting all kinds of (redundant) information at the top of each code file it creates, containing copyright notices, class names, project names and client names. Like it or not, once you create a new class "A", then refactor it to be called "B", the information is wrong already. The comments will keep saying that this is "A.h" or "A.m". In addition, if you reuse classes from one project in a next, it will also state the wrong project name.
//
// A.h
// ProjectName
//
// Created by Author on 19-06-11.
// Copyright 2011 CompanyName. All rights reserved.
//
There must be a reason there aren't many people complaining about this. What is your trick to keep the header comments up to date? Is there a tool that auto-corrects it all? Is there a hidden setting?
Cheers,
EP.
There may be a way to update your comments but it will be tricky.
As far a customizing the template, this is not as bad. it is just a text file located in
/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Templates/File Templates/Cocoa Touch/
Don't edit the files here, they will get overwritten when you update, or reinstall xcode.
Place your custom templates here, in your home directory.
~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Templates/File Templates/
High Order Bit explains further.
Short Answer: Use SCM Commit Hooks (git example, svn example, cvs example)
Reason: Well, you can be rest assured that XCode will not do it. What XCode can do is attach itself to version control system. Its fairly simple to do using commit hooks that most SCMs support. They fire up before/after the commit/push so that source code is updated. You can even send automated emails when commiting etc.
Since GIT is the most popular one in my opinion these days, see this article.
I use custom templates (see #TMB's comment for a link explaining creating your own) that eliminate the project name and copyright info. File name changes rarely enough that that hasn't bothered me yet. If it became a problem, I would just eliminate it from my templates. If I did it again, I would eliminate the file line from the start: There are better and more reliable ways to figure out what file you're in than going to the top of the file.
By default all I get in intellisense are the functions and its signature. I would prefer if I could also get documentation with the intellisense. I realise that I am supposed to place an xml file that contains this documentation along with my dll.
From where can I get this is file? Or is there some other way for me to achieve this?
For the immediate future, there's no way to get the XML documentation short of grabbing the Structuremap source and building it yourself.
As for why that's not included with the distribution, I'm not sure. My only guess is that back when xml-based configuration with SM was more prevalent, Jeremy was concerned about confusion between StructureMap.xml the intellisense file, and StructureMap.xml the configuration file.
That's pure speculation however. For the real scoop you'd have to post on the SM-mailing list. Regardless, for the time being, you have to roll your own from the source. I've done this as well for the same reason, and it wasn't too painful.
-Scott
Edit - Instructions for doing this follow.
Using your favorite SVN client (if you don't have one, I recommend TortoiseSVN) grab the latest from https://structuremap.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/structuremap/trunk/ . If you want the same bits that are in 2.5.3, I think you'll want revision 234. Otherwise, just grab the head and build from that. (If you aren't familiar with SVN, find a tutorial that explains what I'm talking about)
Open up the StructureMap solution in Visual Studio (under the Source subdirectory). Right click the StructureMap project, Go to Properties > Build and ensure the option for XML output documentation is checked.
Build and enjoy.