December 2014 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

Updated Pharo by Example SUnit chapter
by stepharo Jan. 23, 2015

Jan. 23, 2015

Hi guys I'm slowly converting Pharo by example to Pharo 40 and pillar. Here is the SUnit chapter. If you have feedback the chapter is on github. Stef

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The Smalltalk Renaissance Program
by horrido Jan. 13, 2015

Jan. 13, 2015

I've launched a PR campaign to promote and advance the use of Smalltalk (and Amber): http://smalltalkrenaissance.wordpress.com/ <http://smalltalkrenaissance.wordpress.com/> I am seeking the support of the Smalltalk community. My intention is to make Smalltalk Renaissance /a rallying point/ around which everyone can gather and contribute to this campaign. Over the coming weeks and months, I shall outline my plan (which is still evolving). There have been many prior attempts to popularize Smalltalk. None have had any traction. Despite the best efforts of the Smalltalk community, today Smalltalk has become a largely forgotten language. (Smalltalk has fallen off the cliff at the TIOBE index, and it ranks poorly at Redmonk and langpop.corger.nl.) /I am trying something different./ Smalltalk Renaissance is a PR campaign. It is trying to /market/ Smalltalk, not on the exclusive basis of /technical merit/, but also by addressing criticisms and generating excitement about the future of software engineering. It is an ambitious campaign, but in this business, if you don't think *big*, then don't bother wasting your time. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/The-Smalltalk-Renaissance-Program-tp4797112.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Fuel and multiple bytecode set support
by ClÃ©ment Bera Jan. 8, 2015

Jan. 8, 2015

Hello, As some of you may know, Pharo is being enhanced with support for multiple bytecode sets. This will allow to run at the same time compiled methods with 2 different bytecode sets for experimentation and to add easily the new bytecode set described in this ESUG paper <http://esug.org/data/ESUG2014/IWST/Papers/iwst2014_A%20bytecode%20set%20for…> . The virtual machine knows which bytecode set the compiled method uses for its encoding based on the sign of its header. This means that on the contrary to right now, a compiled method *can* have a negative header. The issue is that typically operations such as #bitAnd: or #+ to access bits of the smallinteger does not work the same way on negative integers (2 complement's implementation of integers), resulting in incorrect values. I am fixing the problematic cases in Pharo. One case is in Fuel and I can't fix it myself. It's in: FLCompiledMethodCluster>>#serializeInstance: aCompiledMethodToSerialize with: anEncoder "some code" header := aCompiledMethod header. "some code" anEncoder *encodeUint32*: header "some code" This looks problematic because now header is not a uint anymore but a sint. In addition, #encodeUint32: uses #bitAnd: which may work differently on negative integers. What do you fuel experts think ? Is there anything to fix there ? Best, Clement

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SmalltalkHub bugs & hangs :-(
by Noury Bouraqadi Jan. 7, 2015

Jan. 7, 2015

SmalltalkHub is slow, so donât click too fast :-( While Iâm grateful to developers of SmalltalkHub and previously SqueakSource, I believe as a small community, we cannot afford developing everything by ourselves. We donât have enough man-power. We can see the symptoms since SmalltalkHub is in beta stage since way too long... Itâs better to use some mainstream platform such as github. Weâll we have support for it in Pharo 4? It would be interesting also from the communication point of view to make the world a little bit more aware of Pharo. Noury

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[ANN] WKHTML2PDF for Pharo
by Torsten Bergmann Jan. 7, 2015

Jan. 7, 2015

Need an easy way to convert HTML into PDF for printing? The project http://wkhtmltopdf.org can help you here. If you want to use it from Pharo just check out: http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~TorstenBergmann/WKHTML2PDF This project allows you to easily use the library. First select the engine: HTML2PDFConverter useExecutable. or HTML2PDFConverter useLibrary. and then convert: HTML2PDFConverter convert: 'http://www.pharo.org' toFile: 'pharo.pdf' to get a printable version of the Pharo homepage. As ever docu is on the STHub project website. It uses NativeBoost to call the library and OSProcess to call the executable. Bye T.

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archives?
by stepharo Jan. 7, 2015

Jan. 7, 2015

is this mailing-list archived? Because I would like to browse it Stef

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On Twitter
by horrido Jan. 5, 2015

Jan. 5, 2015

I have to say, I really don't understand this Twitter thing (I'm getting too old for this sh*t). However, I understand that Twitter can be a powerful tool for branding. The power of social media and all that. So I created a Twitter account. My handle is @smalltalkrenais. I just completed my first "tweet". I'm so proud of myself. I am now officially a Twit. I urge everyone in the Smalltalk community to use Twitter. Tweet about all things Smalltalk. Tweet about the latest Smalltalk news. Tweet about your recent experience or discovery with Smalltalk. I'm only one Twit. However, if there are thousands of us, we can get the word out about Smalltalk and raise public awareness. The thing is, *we must /continually/ tweet in order to keep the Smalltalk meme alive.* I've also created a Facebook page, as well as a Google+ page. (See "Contact Us" on our website <http://smalltalkrenaissance.wordpress.com/> .) Feel free to post on them. This is yet another opportunity to spread the word. Let's make the most of social media to help the cause. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/On-Twitter-tp4797177.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Can MongoTalk execute plan javascript MongoDB queries?
by Sebastian Sastre Jan. 5, 2015

Jan. 5, 2015

Is anybody here using MongoTalk doing some fancy custom queries? Not just with boolean conditions but with regex for example. Iâm interested in being able to execute and get the results of a raw javascript query but I cannot found how to do it. I am missing something?

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Old inspector and explorer
by Norbert Hartl Jan. 5, 2015

Jan. 5, 2015

Is there a way to get the old tools via shortcut? I started something new with pharo 4.0 today. I discovered a bug in Nautilus where every rename or deletion of a method raises a debugger. I tried finding the bug but struggled because to me the new inspector is really confusing. If I "just" want to unfold a few levels of references to get a glimpse of the structure the new tool prevents me from doing that. There is just to much information in this window and too much happening to me. To me it looks like a power tool you need to get used to. So it is probably not the best tool for simple tasks and people new to this environment might be overwhelmed. At least I would like to be able to use the old tools. Norbert

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Cog in the cloud
by Ben Coman Jan. 2, 2015

Jan. 2, 2015

Just some thoughts that arose as I skipped along the web... With the idea of using Pharo in the cloud, I was thinking of how PharoNOS[1] is basing off top of the Linux kernel, but the examples indicate its operating in User Mode. So I was wondering about performance being greater[2] if the CogVM ran in Kernel Mode. However maybe this could get tangled in the GPL license of the kernel. Now I believe FreeBSD/NetBSD license is compatible with COG's MIT license, so that seems a better option for eliminating layers of the operating system. They both[3][4] have pre-built Amazon Machine Images to run on EC2, as well as instructions[5] to build your own AMI. So potentially we could build an AMI with the CogVM linked to the FreeBSDKernel operating in Kernel Mode, with no User Mode. The lack of direct access to memory from the Image, and probably single application focus should be sufficient security to forgo User Mode, and run faster. But we could go a step further. Runing in the cloud relies heavily on virtualisation, and for performance[6], most likely on the OS's paravirtualisation interface - to Xen for example. So from Cog, why not interface direct to the Xen FrontEndDriver[7] and eliminate the DomU operating system all together. What I understand from [6] is that Xen's paravirtualisation hooks makes it much easier to boot, than booting on the bare metal of a fully-virtualised system. So the former seems more achievable than the latter (which was the only option in years past), and also be more portable as technology evolves, to any platform Xen runs on. Squeak/Pharo on Cog-Xen could be a good choice for a Cloud Operating System[8]. Maybe a good student research project? cheers -ben [1] http://pillarhub.pharocloud.com/hub/mikefilonov/pharonos [2] http://blog.codinghorror.com/understanding-user-and-kernel-mode/ [3] http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/ [4] http://wiki.netbsd.org/amazon_ec2/amis/ [5] http://wiki.netbsd.org/amazon_ec2/build_your_own_ami/ [6] http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Virtualization_Spectrum [7] http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/FrontendDriver [8] http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Cloud_Operating_Systems

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