In the Smalltalk dialects Squeak and Pharo it is difficult to view changes to source code that occurred accross major releases. This poses a problem for development as well as for code analysis: Developers often need to be able to revert code to a previous version and for code analysis there should ideally be a single source of information. We solve the problem by building a Git repository with the complete source code history of Pharo.

The tool we use to create the Git repository is called Pharogenesis. Pharogenesis uses a Smalltalk implementation of Git called GitFS to build a Git repository from the source code.

The source code database we built with Pharogenesis is available on github (http://github.com/theseion/pharogenesis.git).

Getting Started

To get started you can either use a ready-made one-click image (suggested), or try to load the code yourself.

Load the Code

• Download a Pharo 1.1.1 one-click image.
• Evaluate the following script:

  Gofer new
  url: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/GitFS';
  package: 'ConfigurationOfPharogenesis';
  load.
  ((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfPharogenesis) project version: #stable)
  load: #OBExtension

Load the Pharogenesis repository

To browse method versions in Pharogenesis you need to clone the prepared repository from github. Run the following commands on the command line:

cd <path to image or one-click application>
git clone http://github.com/theseion/pharogenesis.git
cd pharogenesis
git checkout -b origin/pharo

Where to find more information

• the GitFS project on SqueakSource hosts all the code related to the implementation of Git on Filesystem
• the Pharo web page
• the Pharo collaboractive book
• the Git web page
• Git for Squeak by Tony Garnock-Jones on SqueakSource
• Lukas Renggli's blog posts on Colin Putney's Filesystem library: post 1, post 2

Contact

The Pharo mailing list is the place to ask any kind of questions related to Pharogenesis.