Lukas Renggli

Gofer — Monticello and Groups of Packages

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Gofer, a person who runs errands. Origin 1960s: from go for, i.e. go and fetch.

The New Oxford American Dictionary

Synopsis

Gofer is a small tool on top of Monticello that loads, updates, merges, diffs, reverts, commits, recompiles and unloads groups of Monticello packages. Contrary to existing tools Gofer makes sure that these operations are performed as clean as possible:

• Gofer treats packages from one or more repository in one operation.
• Gofer works with fixed versions or tries to find the "latest" version using a given package name.
• Gofer automatically assigns repositories to all packages, so that the other tools are ready to be used on individual packages.
• Gofer makes sure that there is only one repository instance registered for a single physical location.
• Gofer works with Monticello dependencies and uniformly treats them like the primary package.
• Gofer prefers to work with faster repositories if there is a choice.
• Gofer cleans up after Monticello, no empty class categories and no empty method protocols are to be expected.
• Gofer supports operations to sync remote and local repositories with each other.

Installation

Gofer is included with the latest Pharo and GemStone distributions. In case you are missing Gofer in your image, grab it from http://source.lukas-renggli.ch/gofer.html.

Description

Gofer is very simple by design, the basic useage scenario is always the same and consists of three steps:

1. You specify one or more Monticello repository URLs. You can do this using the methods url:, url:username:password: (HTTP, FTP), directory:, or repository: if you need full control. You might also use the convenience methods like squeaksource:, wiresong:, or gemsource: for well known repositories. Additionally the following settings are available:
   • Gofer implicitly declares the local package cache as a repository. To disable the local package cache use the method disablePackageCache, to re-enable use enablePackageCache.
   • Gofer throws an error if a repository is not reachable. To silently ignore repository erros use the message disableRepositoryErrors, to re-enable use enableRepositoryErrors.
2. You specify one or more Monticello packages you want to work with, by adding them to the Gofer instance. Use version: to add a specific version, or use package: to add the "latest" version in the given repository. Furthermore there is package:constraint: that allows you to further constraint the version to be loaded in a block passed in as the second argument.
3. You specify one or more actions to be performed on the specified packages:

Example

To use Gofer to update to exact versions of the Kom Server, the ’latest’ code of Seaside 2.8 and the ’latest’ code of the Scriptaculous package that is committed by the author with the initials ’lr’ one could evaluate:

 Gofer new
     squeaksource: 'KomHttpServer';
     version: 'DynamicBindings-gc.7';
     version: 'KomServices-gc.19';
     version: 'KomHttpServer-gc.32';
     update.
 Gofer new
     squeaksource: 'Seaside';
     package: 'Seaside2.8a';
     package: 'Scriptaculous' constraint: [ :version | version author = 'lr' ];
     load