Insect In Amber. From Kaliningrad, Russia.[1]

Kaliningrad oblast (sometimes called Yantarny krai which means “The amber region”) is located on the coast of the Baltic sea and is the site of the world’s largest amber deposits.

Kaliningrad Project

I created the Kaliningrad project because I want to use Monticello to manage the code that I write in Amber.

Kaliningrad automatically maps Amber package names to Monticello package names, so Kaliningrad is pretty easy to use.

Kaliningrad is based on Seaside 3.0 and uses the Seaside File Library and the Seaside-REST package to serve and store the Amber .js and .st files.

To load Kaliningrad execute the following expression:

Gofer new
    url: 'http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Kaliningrad';
    package: 'ConfigurationOfKaliningrad';
    load.
((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfKaliningrad) project version: '0.1') load.

The Kaliningrad configuration loads only the most basic packages for Seaside 3.0, so you’ll need to load up one of the adaptors (Swazoo, Comanche, or Zinc) before you can connect.

Using Kaliningrad

Once you’ve got the Seaside server running, hit (user/password : admin/tool):

http://localhost:8080/tools/amber-browser

to bring up the Amber Browser:

If you want save your Amber code into a Monticello package follow these steps:

  1. Create an Amber package (‘tODE-AmberClient’) in the Amber Browser.
  2. Create a Monticello package with the same name (‘tODE-AmberClient’) using the Monticello Browser in your image.
  3. Register the Monticello package with the KOAmberBrowser class: 
     KOAmberBrowser addMonticelloPackage: 'tODE-AmberClient'

Thereafter, when you hit the Commit package button for ‘tODE-AmberClient’ in the Amber Browser, the .js and .st source will be saved in the ‘tODE-AmberClient’ Monticello package.

Thats it!

The class KOAmberBrowser is also a good example for how to integrate Amber code into a Seaside component.

Importing classes into Amber

If you want to import a class from your Smalltalk image into Amber, you can evaluate an expression like the following in an Amber workspace:

KOImporter importClass: 'TOSession' intoModule: 'tODE-Amber'

Be aware that there are differences between Amber Smalltalk and other Smalltalk implementations (see the section entitled Differences with other Smalltalk implementations on the Amber documentation page). KOImporter does not check for correctness.

Summary

Kaliningrad 0.1 is based on Amber 0.9.

I’ve been using Kaliningrad with Pharo for a couple of weeks now, but the code should run in GemStone and Squeak.

If you run into problems, let me know.

—–

[1] Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_garland/5133520694 / CC BY-SA 2.0