|
One thing to understand regarding Smalltalk, it is the paradigm shift compared to file based environment:
- with the later, you deal with characters (ascii, utf8)
- with the former, you deal with object (an internal object representation). So indeed the tooling is different. One deal with text processing, the other with object processing. The benefits you get are different. The browsers in Eclipse and Smalltalk are not processing the same thing, an Object is a far more abstracted representation of your source code, for example the browser can ask to an Object can you do 'that' kind of processing, or do you accept I send this message (method call in other language), etc. When developing, the image is your sandbox environment with object representation of your code, but of course Smalltalk developers also save their code in text file representation, but it is only mean as a backup and transportation scheme from an image to another image. AFAIK, it is never uses for anything else than transporting or comparing source code version; not because we can't do it, but because we don't need to it. The question regarding the source code file arises very often on Smalltalk. Not because Smalltalk is doing wrong there, but because it is a paradigm shift, and as you know we are all more or less conservative regarding changes or different point of view; some fellow free software activists disregard me to use such an awkward environment, but at least RMS did not get problem GNU DrGeo moved to the Pharo platform once I explain the underneath system, and that the access to the source code from the VM up to the Pharo environment was plain free software licensed as MIT licence. To sum up:
- the image is the sandbox where you deal with object
- we save code in file (one monolithic file, or small granulated one file per method) for back up, versioning, transportation
- the developer may from time to time, decide to take a fresh image and reload his source code
- delivered Smalltalk application are built from a fresh image and source code installation from the source file of the code. For http://drgeo.eu I use a combination of Smalltalk script and Bash script to build the delivered application for GNU-Linux/MacOSX/Windows.
- |