[Help-smalltalk] Re: brainstorming about gst-package and fetching remote packages

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 11/05/2009 02:20 PM, Gwenael Casaccio wrote:
> So we'll have a central repository at:http://smalltalk.gnu.org/
>
> For each URLs insidehttp://smalltalk.gnu.org/packages/  we will have a
> package.(st|xml) file that stores the information about the related
> project (website, version, ...)
>
> that seems fine for me.

Right, having a package.xml file directly on smalltalk.gnu.org seems 
better than having yet another XML format.  On the other hand we need to 
have smalltalk.gnu.org as the database only---the files need to be 
stored elsewhere.  So I pushed two changes:

1) to gst, adding an <url> element to package.xml that will be used to 
fetch the actual contents from a git or svn repository (or similar, you 
got the idea).

2) to the smalltalk.gnu.org site, adding a "package.xml" field to 
projects that can be used to give the address of a package.xml file. 
See http://smalltalk.gnu.org/project/sandstonedb/package.xml for example 
(sorry Nico for abusing my admin privileges :-) and modifying your package).


For example, to "register" Iliad the procedure is as follows:

1) add a <url>git://github.com/NicolasPetton/iliad.git</git> element to 
his package.xml; the latest PackageBuilder.st in the gst repo does 
include the possibility to create an url tag.  In fact, you are all 
welcome to add <url> tags to your package.xml files even now (except for 
VisualGST).

2) publish the package.xml file in his git repo (it doesn't matter if it 
is automatically generated, it is for greater good!...);

3) go to smalltalk.gnu.org and save 
http://github.com/NicolasPetton/iliad/raw/master/package.xml as the 
package.xml file for Iliad.

Now, http://smalltalk.gnu.org/project/Iliad/package.xml will magically 
include a git:// URL that gst-package could use to clone the repository, 
make an Iliad.star file and install it.

All that's left is to remove the last "could"! :-)

Paolo