VA Smalltalk 5.5 & 7.5

[Temperino]

Hi,
I've an old application written in VA Smalltalk 5.5. This application use the persistent framework "Object Extender".
I don't know nothing about VA 7.5 version, and i'm evaluating to convert all from VA 5.5 to a new version of VA.
Is complicate to do it?
VA 7.5 is compatible with VA 5.5 version?

Thanks
Francesco

[wembley]

Francesco -

VA Smalltalk V7.5 is reasonably compatible with VisualAge Smalltalk V5.5 -- however many years have passed since VisualAge Smalltalk V5.5 was available and many changes have been made to the product in that time period. The most significant changes that would affect your migration are covered in the VA Smalltalk V7.5 Migration Guide (see http://www2.instantiations.com/VAST/Doc ... grtfrm.htm).

For you, the major issue is that IBM removed ObjectExtender from the product in VisualAge Smalltalk V6.0 with no replacement. However, the most recent Object Extender code is available for download (see http://www.instantiations.com/VAST/more/goodies.html). This code has not been tested with any version of VA Smalltalk, so there could be problems using it with VA Smalltalk.

[jtuchel]

Francesco,

here at objektfabrik we've made quite some migrations from older VisualAge versions to Version 7.x. Most of the problems we've encountered had very little to do with changes made to the product by IBM or Instantiations. Most problems are caused by the quality of the code management (meaning configuration management and load structures) in the projects themselves.

We hardly ever needed more than 10-15 person days to do migrations - even from old versions like 4.5 to recent product releases. A side effect of a migration can be that you learn a lot about what you can do better in managing your code. And, of course, you benefit from new features.

I gave a presentation on migration at the VA Smalltalk Forum 2007, the slides are available for download at: http://www.objektfabrik.de/Downloads/VA ... Tuchel.pdf (The slides are in German).
An english summary of the talk can be found at: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/files/ja ... eports.pdf (Thanks to Niall Ross).

And, of course, feel free to contact me in case you are looking for help with migrating

Joachim