Business Application Framework

[Peter TB Brett]

On 2015-08-12 22:52, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Now that we're talking about a much broader scope, and especially
> given the central role of VCS in fostering healthy open source work,
> my opinion is now more open than before, and somewhat undecided.
> 
> If it turns out that we've had a great open source option the whole
> time and just never realized it, the situation is somewhat mitigated.
> 
> I don't know if lcVCS is available under GPL-compatible license, and
> if so that would seem a good option.   But then again, if it's a good
> option why would LiveCode Ltd undertake the non-trivial expense of
> writing a completely different tool?
> 
> These are open questions, for which I currently have no answer.

## Current state of version control for stacks

I spent the first few months after joining LiveCode attempting to 
implement a scheme which would allow *any* LiveCode app -- no matter how 
complicated -- to be stored in a format that could be reliably and 
safely stored in a version control system and losslessly converted to 
and from "traditional" LiveCode stacks.

It turned out to be impractical to do this any better than lcVCS does, 
and lcVCS is already free software that any of our users can use, so my 
project got shelved around Christmas 2014 [1].  If you want to see where 
I got to, go and look at:

* https://github.com/peter-b/livecode/tree/feature-stackdir -- full spec 
+ implementation for on-disk format

* https://github.com/peter-b/livecode/tree/feature-stackarr -- partial 
implementation of stack (de)serialisation

It's entirely free software, and anyone can take the code and finish the 
job.

## Business Application Framework != version control for stacks

In the meantime, one of our developers explored an alternative approach 
to storing apps in version control.  It becomes much easier when you 
constrain users to write and design their programs in a **totally** 
different way to traditional LiveCode apps.  That's the Business 
Application Framework.  It's a completely new approach to LiveCode 
version control, in that it doesn't even attempt to solve the problem of 
applying version control to LiveCode stacks.

It is probably also worth mentioning that the Business Application 
Framework is written entirely in LiveCode.  It's built using features 
that are available to everyone as free software in the community 
edition.  Specifically, those features are: text based file I/O, string 
manipulation, and script-only stacks.

                                     Peter


[1] Since then, I've been working on LiveCode Builder, HTML5, and 
various quality assurance things (including a continuous integration bot 
written in pure LCB -- no LiveCode engine needed!)

-- 
Dr Peter Brett <peter.brett at livecode.com>
LiveCode Engine Development Team