ST 4U 257: Code Recovery in VA Smalltalk

July 13, 2012 11:12:56.707

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at code recovery in VA Smalltalk. Short of a drive failure, it's pretty much impossible to lose code when using VA, and we'll see why today. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

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Today we'll look at how easy it is to recover lost code in VA - we'll create a small application and class, and then quit without saving - relying on ENVY to pick up the pieces for us. To start, here's the small class:

Class

We quit without saving, brought a base image (i.e., not one we saved) up, and sure enough, our code is nowhere to be found:

Lost Code

From the Launcher, select browse the applications in ENVY, and scroll down to the one we just lost - it will show up as not having been released, but it's all there. Tight click and select Load.

Load

That loads the application, but we still want the classes. Right click again, and select Manage Application:

Manage

From here, we can select one or more classes in the list, and load them by version - in this case, the most recent:

Load Class

Now we can return to our workspace, and try creating an instance again:

Recovered

That's one of the nicest things about ENVY - even if you don't version your code off, it does it for you. Short of a catastrophic loss of your drive, you can't really lose code.

Need more help? There's a screencast for other topics like this which you may want to watch. Questions? Try the "Chat with James" Google gadget over in the sidebar.

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