With the release of Seaside 2.9 Alpha 2 there comes a new way to conveniently load the Seaside packages you want to use in your development, testing and deployment images: The Seaside Builder.

Remember, previous versions of Seaside used to be a single huge monolithic package. With Seaside 2.9 one of the goals was to split the code into small and manageable packages. We’ve spent a lot of time in finding a good package structure and we are sure people will appreciate not to be forced to always load and use all the code. This also greatly improves the portability between Smalltalk dialects. The drawback was that it is not exactly easy to choose and load the numerous packages in the right order, that all depended on internal and external packages in one way or the other.

The Seaside Builder tries to solve this problem. It lets you either select a predefined configuration of Seaside packages or manually choose the packages you need. The builder automatically ensures that all prerequisites are selected and loaded in the right order. For the first time it is possible to conveniently choose between the MIT licensed Comanche or the LGPL licensed Swazoo web server.

At the bottom of the page there are two download options available: "Load Script" creates a change-set that can be dragged onto any image causing it to load the selected Seaside packages. There is also the possibility to download a "Monticello Configuration" of the selected packages. In the future more download options might become available.

Btw, the Seaside Builder itself is running on a minimal Pharo Core image with a Seaside 2.9 installation built using a load script produced by itself. The deployment image has no tests or development tools loaded, just the necessary Canvas and Component API, the Kom Web Server, the JQuery package that is used for the AJAX interaction, and all the required dependencies.