Where does clooj store its state?

[Cedric Greevey]

I've just installed clooj on a new system. I *thought* that copying the projects directory into the directory containing the clooj jar and running the jar with that as CWD would result in clooj seeing the pre-existing projects, but it does not; it comes up blank, like a new, empty install.

So I guess clooj keeps a file somewhere that lists the projects created with it and points to their locations on disk, or at least that points to the "projects" directory.

I checked AppData/Local, LocalLow, and Roaming on the source machine for any obviously clooj related items and found nothing. There's nothing in the source machine's clooj directory, either, but the projects subdirectory and clooj jar.

Since it's Java, I doubt it's using the registry instead of the normal filesystem to store this data. So there's a file somewhere I need to copy to the new install (and possibly edit to change file paths). But without the file's path or even name I could search high and low for hours and never find it. Can any clooj user or developer quickly reply with the file's path?

[Lee Spector]

At least under Mac OS X it stores stuff in files in ~/Library/Preferences/.

BUT:

- It seems to create and orphan a *lot* of files there.

- If run with Java 1.7 the "open project" file doesn't allow you to select/add new projects.

- When I looked in those preferences files to try to add stuff manually it wasn't immediately obvious to me how to do that. Now if I want to use Clooj and add projects I have to launch it with Java 1.6 (and then open them via the open project menu item).

So this is a messy area of Clooj that definitely needs attention, and maybe when it gets it the person who attends to it can do so in a way that fulfills your expectations as well...

-Lee

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Lee Spector, Professor of Computer Science
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[Cedric Greevey]

Where is this Library folder on Windows? I can't find it on the older system. It's not in directly in Users/username, nor in AppData, AppData/Local, AppData/LocalLow, AppData/Roaming, or Users/Documents on Windows Vista.

[Lee Spector]

I don't know about Windows, but if it helps the files have names like:

clooj.c6833c87-9631-44af-af83-f417028ea7aa.expanded-paths.plist
clooj.c6833c87-9631-44af-af83-f417028ea7aa.last-open-dir.plist
clooj.c6833c87-9631-44af-af83-f417028ea7aa.project-set.plist

There are a bunch of others too, but they all seem to start with "clooj".

-Lee

[Dave Ray]

Clooj uses java.util.prefs.Preferences to store preferences. On
Windows that ends up in the registry:

http://kutuma.blogspot.com/2008/04/registry-entry-for-java-preferences.html

this location may have changed in windows 7, but I don't have a
windows machine to check on.

Cheers,

Dave

[Cedric Greevey]

OK, can someone please just tell me how to port a clooj install, including projects, between machines then? Simple, step-by-step, works with clooj 0.2.8. A good explanation for it not being as simple as "copy the projects directory, then run the jar in the directory containing the projects directory" would be a nice bonus.

(And wasn't having more complication than just "copy all the files" exactly the sort of reason for preferring clooj to Eclipse and Netbeans to begin with?

Also: IMO, if moving clooj+projects to new hardware necessitates half an hour or more of poking around in the filesystem plus a moderately-long mailing list thread each time some user tries to do it, then something, somewhere, is wrong.)

[Lee Spector]

I can't tell you this because I don't know the answer.

I agree that it should be as simple as you say, even if the procedure ends up being a little different.

I think that what's "wrong," BTW, is just that nobody has stepped up to actively maintain Clooj. Arthur, Clooj's author, did a totally fantastic service to the community by creating it and maintaining it as long as he did, IMNSHO, but apparently he has other demands on his time now and I can't fault him for this in the least. I myself have neither the time nor the relevant expertise to do it, and while I've tried pretty aggressively to cheerlead others with the skills/time to step up to the plate on this (mostly on the Clojure list) I guess there aren't yet any takers. There's a GSoC proposal idea on a list somewhere. I'm now using Eclipse again, which has improved a lot recently but still doesn't make me very happy, and I'd much rather use an updated and actively maintained Clooj.

-Lee

[Cedric Greevey]

I'm perfectly happy using clooj 0.2.8. I just want to know how to copy my install over. I don't care if I have to copy a file or two manually, or edit a path somewhere.

[Cedric Greevey]

> I'm perfectly happy using clooj 0.2.8. I just want to know how
> to copy my install over. I don't care if I have to copy a file or
> two manually, or edit a path somewhere.

Well?

[Lee Spector]

I mentioned that I don't know... Perhaps no-one else here does either because no devs are currently working actively on Clooj.

-Lee

[Cedric Greevey]

It's not a question it should take "devs" to answer, just an experienced user.

In any event, a move of my clooj install that should have taken no more than five minutes has now taken 20 hours and counting, which itself suffices to prove that something is wrong.

Really I don't see any good reason I shouldn't be able to put a projects directory and a clooj jar on a USB stick and have easy access to the stuff on any machine that has a JRE installed.

[Lee Spector]

I've used it quite a lot and taught several classes with it, but that doesn't mean I know its guts. If we had a dev working on it then that person would know. What's wrong is that we don't.

-Lee

[Cedric Greevey]

If you even need to "know its guts" to move one or more projects across installs, or move an install, there's a problem.

[Lee Spector]

If someone was actively developing it then that person could surely make it easy for us who don't know its guts to move projects across installs (among other things).

-Lee

[Cedric Greevey]

I must apologize for my confusion. It seems I for some reason had thought that the best place to ask for basic information about clooj that wasn't in the clooj documentation was the clooj mailing list. Evidently, I was mistaken. A pointer to the correct place to ask such things would be appreciated.

Meanwhile, I have determined that renaming a project folder, running clooj, creating a same-named project as the original, exiting clooj, deleting the new project directory, and renaming the old project folder back *seems* to restore one specific project. While being a needlessly tedious and time-consuming workaround.

[Lee Spector]

I believe that this is indeed the correct place to ask for information about Clooj, but that doesn't mean that there'll necessarily be anybody here (or anywhere) who is able to answer the questions. I hope that some developer-types get involved so that that situation changes.

On your specific issue, I had thought you were looking for a way to move a whole setup (lots of projects) in one fell swoop, but your workaround is for a single project. If that's what you're really after then can't you just select "Open" from the "Project" menu? This *should* work although it fails for me under Java 1.7 -- I get a file dialog that doesn't give me the option of selecting the project folder. It works if I launch Clooj using Java 1.6. The incompatibility with Java 1.7 is a known issue that it would be great to have fixed.

-Lee

[Cedric Greevey]

It *is* for one project at a time, which is what's annoying if there are many. "Open", as you said, is buggy and also is one project at a time. And here's another new bug: scrolling to the right in the REPL input pane isn't working. Only difference is Java version (1.7) and OS (Windows 7) instead of 6 for both (1.6, Vista). Lucky seven. :P

[Tom Maynard]

On 9/3/13 23:57, Lee Spector wrote:
> I believe that this is indeed the correct place to ask for information about Clooj

Can you two fellows please continue this argument offline? It's
starting to get tiresome, and at this point no one is benefitting from
further chatter.