The code packaging system in Pharo. A summary

RPackage is Pharo’s internal representation of a package. One way to organize classes in the system.

RPackages should (by design) correspond to a Monticello package, where Monticello is the code-package repository and versioning system

Metacello is a package management system that manages dependencies between different Monticello packages (providing the equivalent of the facilities such as maven, npm, apt-get)

Versionner helps you to generate Metacello configurations

The Configuration Browser allows you to browse the Metacello configurations from a given repository, and load them.

- Guillermo Polito

Configuration Browser

Problem : Loading a Monticello package without using the configurationOf or baselineOf containing the dependency information causes problem in loading the package.

Solution: Learn to load via a configuration

The convention for where these ConfigurationOf / baselineOf things are kept, and the way to check for their existence.

The Configuration Browser

The Pharo image holds a meta-repository of configurations, and a baseline is usually kept along with the packages.  The Configuration Browser is a GUI to access it.

To check on a Pharo version, open the ConfigurationBrowser

Monticello is a browser for Packages in the image.  (and contains tools for loading in new packages, if there are no inter-package dependencies), and for saving updated versions of the packages

Metacello is a browser for Projects. (A Project is a group of packages + dependencies)

The Configuration Browser knows about unloaded Packages held in Repositories - if they are listed in that Pharo image's meta repository.

So an image has a sort-of Pharo core of things which are actually in the image.  And also a sort of Pharo fringe of things that the Image knows about, within its Meta Repository, which it knows how to load in a working configuration

Configurations will add repositories and fetch packages, e.g. the configuration for SandstoneDb in the ConfigurationBrowser of Pharo 4.

Usability issue:
For the naive user
Having two buttons on the Configuration Browser is confusing:
Either alone seem to have obvious visibility
Both together have low visibility, and suggest there is some learning I need to do to be able to use it