November 2012 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

[Pharo-project] GSoC: ARM jitter for Squeak VM
by Nick Ager Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

Here's hoping that in a similar way to Yanni and the ePUB proposal and someone will jump in and say that they are already working on this. Quoting Eliot: It's not overambitious for someone good. And I'd love to see it happen. > But finding time to be a mentor has proven difficult for me in the past. > I'd happily be part-mentor, but I need someone to at least help in the > GSoC process... so if there is anyone out there that can help Eliot and Igor with mentoring or the GSoC process, jump in and offer support. The proposal: ----- Name: ARM jitter for Squeak VM Level: Advanced Possible mentor: Eliot Miranda Possible second mentor: Igor Stasenko Description The Squeak VM is the dynamic virtual machine used for many open-source software projects such as Scratch [1], eToys [2], Pharo [3], the Newspeak language [4], the innovative web framework Seaside [5] and many others. CogVM [6] is a development of the Squeak VM which adds a powerful Intel x86 JITer [7]. The CogVM JIT has significantly improved the performance of the open-source Smalltalk projects which have adapted to use it. Increasingly low cost highly capable ARM hardware such as the Raspberry Pi [8] and the Beagle Board [9] have become widely available. In addition the new version of the one-laptop-per-child is based on the ARM platform [10]. The Squeak VM compiles for ARM platforms, but currently there is no JIT on ARM platforms, significantly decreasing the performance of popular software on ARM. The goal of this project is to add simple ARM JITTing capability to the CogVM. [1] http://scratch.mit.edu/ [2] http://www.squeakland.org/about/intro/ [3] http://www.pharo-project.org [4] http://newspeaklanguage.org/ [5] http://seaside.st/ [6] http://gitorious.org/cogvm [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation [8] http://www.raspberrypi.org/ [9] http://beagleboard.org/bone [10] http://one.laptop.org/about/xo-3 Technical Details The work would require a interest in virtual machine optimisation, some knowledge of Intel x86 and ARM assembler and knowledge of C and dynamic languages. The Squeak and Cog VM are written in a simplified subset of Smalltalk known as slang [11] - which then generates C output and forms the basis of the VM. As the Squeak VM is a Smalltalk program, it is developed in Smalltalk, and the Cog JIT is no exception. The VM, including the JIT, is written in Smalltalk and run in the context of the Smalltalk IDE, but the JIT still generates machine-code that must be evaluated within the Smalltalk environment. On x86 is done by interfacing to an x86 simulator library derived from the Bochs x86/x86-64 PC simulator, written in C++. Implementing the ARM port should be no different. The first task will be to choose and interface to a suitable ARM simualtor/emulator. Once this is working, the ARM code generator can be incrementally developed within Smalltalk. Finally once the simulator is fully functional one can get down and dirty with an actual physical ARM machine - such as the Raspberry Pi or Beagle Board. [11] http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2267 Benefits to the Student The student will gain an in-depth knowledge of virtual machine optimisation, working in a productive innovative environment - it's great fun to be able to implement a JIT in a safe high-level dynamic language, instead of the traditional route of developing in C/C++ and debugging in GDB. The student will have the satisfaction of seeing performance gains for a range of high-profile projects which use the Squeak VM on ARM. Benefits to the Community The Smalltalk community will gain an initial implementation of an ARM Jitter which can then be further developed along-side the x86 dynamic translation work. An ARM Jitter for the CogVM will improve the performance of many notable open-source projects on low-cost ARM hardware, bringing innovative software and development environments to wider community. ---- Cheers Nick

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[Pharo-project] Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean?
by Sebastian Nozzi Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

Hello Pharo Devs, I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo. I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly? For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (ExposÃ©, etc.). Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert. Best regards, Sebastian

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[Pharo-project] Halo fly by help broken: an analysis -> MorphicEventHandler is not initialized
by StÃ©phane Ducasse Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

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[Pharo-project] Got our first pharo consortium contract :)
by StÃ©phane Ducasse Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

Hi guys This is a great day. We got our first pharo consortium contract signed by a great company: 2Denker :) Thanks for your trust! Soon the web site will get from the ground. Esteban got distracted by some VM bug chasing parties but he will be back on it. Stef

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[Pharo-project] New Change System
by Ezequiel Lamonica Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

Hi guys, We are working on a New Change System<http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~EzequielLamonica/NewChangeSystem/> . In this link you can see the project. It uses Pharo 2.0. There are some little bugs related to refactors which we are solving. Some features: - Semantic changes - Tracking in real time - Undo/redo of every change - Select a snapshot and redo changes from it to the end. So, if your image is broken, you can open the image again, open the change browser, select the last snapshot and right click -> redo changes. That's all. - Change browser with filters and a tree view for compound changes like refactors, class removals, etc - Diff view to see the impact of a change in the time when it was created To open the change browser: open the world menu -> tools -> Change Browser Try it and give me your feedback. Here you are the gofer script: *Gofer new* *smalltalkhubUser: 'EzequielLamonica' project: 'NewChangeSystem';* *package: 'Changes';* *load* * * Thanks!

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[Pharo-project] [update 2.0] #20420
by Marcus Denker Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

20420 ----- Issue 7055: Removing the last direct references to Debugger http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=7055 Issue 7058: bug on compilation http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=7058 Issue 7045: SystemNavigation>>#allUnimplementedNonPrimitiveCalls calls isFalse: http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=7045 Issue 7053: improve AbsolutePath tests http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=7053 Diff information: http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Pharo20/Tools-MarcusDenker.991.diff http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Pharo20/System-Support-MarcusDenker.749.diff http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Pharo20/Polymorph-Widgets-MarcusDenker.738.diff http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Pharo20/Nautilus-MarcusDenker.379.diff http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Pharo20/Kernel-MarcusDenker.1258.diff http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Pharo20/HudsonBuildTools20-MarcusDenker.10.diff http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/Pharo20/FileSystem-Tests-Core-MarcusDenker.39.di… -- Marcus Denker -- denker(a)acm.org http://www.marcusdenker.de

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Re: [Pharo-project] Versioning external packages
by Fernando Olivero Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

Hi Roberto, in the first case you have to add the methods in a category named: '*MyPackage', then Monticello versions it as an method "extension", a method of you package which is in a class that doesn't belong to your package. OrderedCollection>>myMethodExtension " I'm in a method category starting with an asterisk *" self doSomething. In the second case, you should put the class in your package, so it would be versioned (and be part of), your package, but still accessible throughout the image. But, if you think your new Roassal Layout is cool enough, then you should tell the package maintainers to add it to Roassal. Saludos, Fernando On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 12:12 PM, roberto.minelli(a)usi.ch < roberto.minelli(a)usi.ch> wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm using Monticello to version my source code. > > Suppose this use case: I need to add a message to the OrderedCollection > class and I want my message to be versioned within my repository (i.e., > when an user downloads my package she also get the new message in the > OrderedCollection class. > > And another one, suppose I create a new Layout for Roassal that suits my > needs. I will create a class in the category 'Roassal-Layout' which is not > versioned in my repository. Is there a way to version it? > > Cheers, > Roberto >

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[Pharo-project] What the best way to implement week dictionary cache
by Denis Kudriashov Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

Hello. I want implement cache for proxy objects. I need some kind of dictionary which I can request for proxy of actual object. And any user of actual objects will work with same instances of proxies. And every proxy object has reference to actual object. Obvious solution is basic dictionary with actual objects as keys and proxy-objects as values. But next I want my dictionary be week. And when nobody uses actual object it should be garbaged and my cache of proxies should be cleaned from unused proxies/actuals. Is it possible to implement such cache? And how it can be done? Best regards, Denis

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[Pharo-project] New Change System
by Torsten Bergmann Nov. 27, 2012

Nov. 27, 2012

Nice! You should disable the "undo" menu on evaluted expressions since they can not be undone. UI need some work (alignment, splitter size, ...) Will it support grouping similar to "Tools" -> "Recent Messages" so I can see changes I did on a method, class, ...? Thanks T.

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Re: [Pharo-project] ProfStef on steroids (was: Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean?)
by Stephan Eggermont Nov. 26, 2012

Nov. 26, 2012

Sebastian Nozzi wrote: >When I read your past discussion about the help-system not being able >to show "figures" (I think Igor pointed it out) I thought: "wait a >second, why is it not possible to "embed" Morphs into the text?". I >thought I had seen something like that in the past before... (in >Squeak). Yes, you can do those things. I use that in the (Glamour based) Tutorial code. The red bullets are forms, inserted in a (non-empty) Text with richText addAttribute: (TextAnchor new anchoredMorph: GLMUIThemeExtraIcons glamorousRedCircle asMorph; yourself) from: richText size -1 to: richText size. (and yes, I'll look up the unicode value for bullet) Stephan

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