October 2026 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

[ANN] Pharo 14 Released !
by Esteban Lorenzano Oct. 27, 2026

Oct. 27, 2026

Dear Pharo users and dynamic language lovers: We have released Pharo <https://pharo.org/> version 14! What is Pharo? Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language and a powerful environment focused on simplicity and immediate feedback. Screenshot of Pharo 14Screenshot of Pharo 14 * Simple & powerful language: No constructors, no types declaration, no interfaces, no primitive types. Yet a powerful and elegant language with a full syntax fitting in one postcard! Pharo is objects and messages all the way down. * Live, immersive environment: Immediate feedback at any moment of your development: Developing, testing, debugging. Even in production environments, you will never be stuck in compiling and deploying steps again! * Amazing debugging experience: Pharo environment includes a debugger unlike anything you've seen before. It allows you to step through code, restart the execution of methods, create methods on the fly, and much more! * Pharo is yours: Pharo is made by an incredible community, with more than [X] contributors for the last revision of the platform and hundreds of people constantly contributing with frameworks and libraries. * Fully open-source: Pharo full stack is released under MIT <https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT> License and available on GitHub <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo> ... more on the Pharo Features page <http://www.pharo.org/features>. In this iteration of Pharo, our efforts have concentrated on three main areas: * *Modernizing the development tools.* We introduced Mission Control and Pulse (the replacement for Spotter), reworked the Method Browser and rewrote the Settings Browser, and consolidated Epicea and ProfStef into NewTools. This continues our ongoing migration of the development tools to the Spec-based tooling stack. * *Rebuilding the refactoring and command infrastructure.* Refactoring commands were migrated to a driver-based architecture behind a unified command registry, and we kept expanding Pharo's command-line capabilities (command-line testing, a command-line debugger, and Sindarin script tooling). * *Modernizing the virtual machine.* We unified frames and stack management, added RISC-V JIT support, extended memory management (direct old-space allocation and GC improvements), advanced Slang/C compilation, and modernized the cross-platform build infrastructure. Worth noting: starting with this release, we have moved our release schedule from spring (March–May) to fall (September–November). Pharo 14 is the first version released under the new schedule. Some highlights of this amazing version: Highlights Tools * Introduction of Mission Control * New/reworked Method Browser * Settings Browser rewrite and switch to default * Epicea migration into NewTools * ProfStef migration into NewTools * Introduction of Pulse (Spotter replacement) * TestRunner integration and command-line testing * Calypso fixes * Cavrois / window profile work * File Browser, Finder and Transcript improvements System * Refactoring command migration and registry * Scoped extensions and selector semantics * Clean blocks and debugger/evaluation behavior * ClassBuilder, trait and superclass correctness * Compiler API split and method installation * UnifiedFFI value holders, |FFIMethod|, callbacks and bootstrap resets * Command-line debugger * Debugger / client-model cleanup * Package/baseline modularization and bootstrap dependency cleanup * Morphic / UIManager dependency reduction * FastTable, text, graphics, Zinc and Zodiac fixes * Sindarin script tooling * Code editor / code presenter work * List, tree and filtering behavior * Dialog, window and modal behavior * Action/command enhancements and cleanup * Morphic backend and layout fixes Virtual machine * Frame unification and stack management improvements, delivering substantial interpreter and execution engine cleanups * RISC-V JIT support, expanding platform coverage and future-proofing VM development * New memory management capabilities, including direct old-space allocation and numerous GC and allocation improvements * Extensive compiler and Slang/C translation work, with many correctness fixes, new tests, and improved inspection tools * Platform and build modernization, including SDL updates, improved CI, cross-build support, and updated third-party dependencies * Large-scale cleanup and refactoring efforts across the VM, interpreter, Cogit, PICs, and infrastructure Development Effort This new version is the result of 978 Pull Requests integrated just in the Pharo repository. We have closed 616 issues since Pharo 13. The project now counts 432 forks and 1,494 stars on GitHub. We also have a lot of work in the separate projects that are included in each Pharo release: * <https://github.com/pharo-spec/NewTools>https://github.com/pharo-spec/NewTools * <https://github.com/pharo-spec/Spec>https://github.com/pharo-spec/Spec * <https://github.com/pharo-vcs/Iceberg>https://github.com/pharo-vcs/Iceberg * <https://github.com/pharo-graphics/Roassal>https://github.com/pharo-graphics/Roassal * <https://github.com/pillar-markup/Microdown>https://github.com/pillar-markup/Microdown * <https://github.com/pillar-markup/BeautifulComments>https://github.com/pillar-markup/BeautifulComments * <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm>https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm Contributors We always say Pharo is yours. It is yours because we made it for you, but most importantly, because it is made by the invaluable contributions of our great community (yourself). A large community of people from all around the world contributed to Pharo 14 by making pull requests, reporting bugs, participating in discussion threads, providing feedback, and a lot of helpful tasks in all our community channels. Thank you all for your contributions. The Pharo Team * Discover Pharo: <https://pharo.org/features>https://pharo.org/features * Try Pharo: <https://pharo.org/download>http://pharo.org/download <https://pharo.org/download> * Learn Pharo: <https://pharo.org/documentation>http://pharo.org/documentation <https://pharo.org/documentation>

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Pharo News of the Week 43/2026
by Marcus Denker Oct. 23, 2026

Oct. 23, 2026

Hi, I want to restart sending a weekly summary to the list, this is now using an automatic process, let’s see how well this works in practice. In addition to the issue tracker summary, this already adds a mailinglist summary. Plan: - add a Discord discussion summary - Integrate news posts from Discord news channel Pharo News of the Week 43/2026 ============================== 16 October - 23 October 2026 Highlights ---------- - files.pharo.org was down 21/22 October (fixed) - VM: memory corruption in the allInstances primitive fixed on the main VM branch, with a backport for the Pharo 10 VM (#1115, #1116). - Pharo 13: fix for a VM crash caused by stale FullBlockClosures after a class reshape (#20067). - Pharo 15: more Calypso menus move to Commander2, and the pure Morphic find-and-replace dialog is removed in favour of the Spec one. - PRs merged: pharo 9 (Pharo 15: 8, Pharo 13: 1), pharo-vm 2, Spec 0, NewTools 0, iceberg 0. Pharo 15 -------- Eight PRs merged into Pharo15, the development branch. - #20097 Remove pure Morphic find and replace https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20097 - #20106 Fix #20102: Add shortcut commands to define temporary and instance variables without dialog https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20106 - #20109 Fix #20108: Fix broken hash in MetacelloProjectRegistration https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20109 - #20107 Migrate the class menu of Calypso to Commander2 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20107 - #20103 Fix ClapDocumenter tests https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20103 - #20104 Migrate Class/Method "Extras" menus from Commander to Commander2 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20104 - #20098 Clean various little glitches https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20098 - #19846 Improve UI for rename argument/temporary variable and add tests https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/19846 Pharo 13 - #20067 [P13] 20046-Stale-FullBlockClosures-after-class-reshape- cause-VM-crash https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/20067 VM and other repositories ------------------------- VM (pharo-project/pharo-vm) - #1115 Fix/all instances primitive memory corruption (pharo-12 branch) https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/1115 - #1116 [P10] - Fix/all instances primitive memory corruption (pharo-10 branch) https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/1116 Iceberg (pharo-vcs/iceberg) - Tag v2.5.1 on Pharo14: pins libgit2-pharo-bindings v3.3.0 and Tonel v1.2.1 in BaselineOfIceberg. https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/tree/v2.5.1 - Work continues on the track-external-files branch (no PR merged yet). Mailing lists ------------- pharo-dev - Smalltalk as a wire format: agents sending Morphic UIs as source, run on a Dart/WasmGC interpreter (16 Oct): James Ladd presents Taskriz, where AI agents send Smalltalk source that builds native UIs, and asks for feedback on the Morph API, liveness and Pharo as the agent side. https://lists.pharo.org/hyperkitty/list/pharo-dev@lists.pharo.org/thread/HV…

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files.pharo.org online again
by Marcus Denker Oct. 22, 2026

Oct. 22, 2026

Hello, The server http://files.pharo.org <http://files.pharo.org/> is online again. We will work on a better setup not relying on a single server. Marcus

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files.pharo.org down
by Marcus Denker Oct. 21, 2026

Oct. 21, 2026

Hi, files.pharo.org down, we are investigating. Marcus

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Smalltalk as a wire format: agents sending Morphic UIs as source, run on a Dart/WasmGC interpreter
by James Ladd Oct. 16, 2026

Oct. 16, 2026

Hi all, James Ladd here. Some of you may remember me from Redline Smalltalk, a Smalltalk for the JVM, years back. I've been away from the community for a while, but Smalltalk has crept back into what I'm building, and I'd like to share it with people who'll understand why that makes me happy. I've been building Taskriz, a way for AI agents to ask people things: approve an invoice, pick a delivery date, send a photo. Instead of sending text, the agent sends Smalltalk source that builds a small UI. The source arrives on the person's phone or computer, gets evaluated in a sandbox, and a button sends the answer back. For example: | colour | colour := SegmentedControlMorph new label: 'Colour'; segments: #('Red' 'Green' 'Blue'); selected: 'Green'. ScreenMorph new title: 'Favourite Colour'; addMorph: (ListMorph new style: #insetGrouped; addMorph: colour; yourself); ... The Morphs are modelled on Pharo's Morphic, which will be obvious from the addMorph:s and yourselfs. The big difference is that they don't draw themselves. The morph tree is turned into a UI description, and each platform renders it natively: in a browser, in a terminal, and in iPhone and Android apps. The set of Morphs follows Apple's UIKit (a Morph per control) rather than Pharo's, so that the result feels native on a phone. To be clear about what it isn't: there's no image, no IDE and no bytecode. It's a small interpreter written in Dart and compiled to WebAssembly (WasmGC). It reads source into message sends and interprets them, and most of the kernel is written in Smalltalk. It's a long way from Pharo, but it's been a joy to see an AI agent write cascades. Things I'd genuinely like this list's opinion on: - The Morph API. I've stuck close to Pharo's Morphic idioms so that it feels familiar. Would Spec's style have been a better model for UIs described once and rendered in many places? - Liveness. Dropping "everything is live and draws itself" was the price of native rendering. Has anyone here tried something similar, such as Morphic as a description that gets rendered elsewhere, and what did you miss? - Pharo as the agent. The agent side is a plain JSON API, so a Pharo image could send requests and get answers back with Zinc. If anyone fancies trying that, I'd love to hear how it goes, and I'll help. If you want to look closer, the developer docs and more examples are at https://www.taskriz.com/developers/ and every Morph is live at https://www.taskriz.com/morphcatalog/ Thanks for reading. It's good to be back among Smalltalkers. - James

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Spam Problem: please ignore spam mail
by Marcus Denker Oct. 7, 2026

Oct. 7, 2026

Hello, We are seeing spammers subscribing to the list before sending spam. This is really a new level (I think they use llm agents). I have put the list on emergency moderation for now cleaned the archive will setup a stricter subscription with the support (already discussing with them) Marcus

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[ANN] Canopy - I have global values
by Norbert Hartl Oct. 1, 2026

Oct. 1, 2026

Hi, I’m happy to announce a little library I did for managing configuration files and metrics a bit better for the case of ApptiveGrid. As most things in ApptiveGrid like Soil I factor it out and make it publicly available. Yesterday I gave a talk at the UK smalltalk user group which was fun and I took it to make it kind of the release event. The code is here https://github.com/ApptiveGrid/Canopy und a description of the rationale you can read here https://norbert.hartl.name/blog/2026-10-01_canopy-i-have-global-values.html Happy to get feedback and comments, Norbert

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