- 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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Sharing projects: PCRE2 and OpenTelemetry
by DARBORD Gabriel Sept. 2, 2026

Sept. 2, 2026

Hi everyone, I'd like to share some of the projects I've been working on, and especially two that reached v1 this summer :) Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions Link: https://github.com/Gabriel-Darbord/pharo-pcre2 This project provides comprehensive FFI bindings to the PCRE2<https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2> library. You may remember my quick talk at "Show Us Your Project" if you were at ESUG'26. To summarize: I felt dissatisfied with regular expressions as they currently work in Pharo, especially because they have their own syntax. The most infuriating feature to me is that the colon `:` is a special character, which is also ubiquitous when working with Pharo because it's part of the message keyword syntax! For the story, up to Pharo 12, most search features including method search (cmd/ctrl+F when selecting methods in the browser) used regex implicitly. If you searched for a keyword selector and used a colon, the list included all methods because that was the default behavior when the pattern failed. You had to escape the colon character with a backslash, something you'd only know if you were familiar with Pharo's regex. Now in the "age of LLMs", I wanted to provide regex search capabilities to agents, but I noticed they kept making wrong patterns because they weren't familiar with Pharo's particular syntax. I had already started this project a couple of years ago, and thanks to agents I was able to quickly finish the binding coverage (I'm not saying the project is finished!). We're now using it as part of our Pharo MCP<https://github.com/Evref-BL/MCP>, also presented at ESUG (quick plug :P). Enough rambling, the README and docs can tell you more if you're interested. Just one last thing worth mentioning: if you know a bit about FFI, you probably know that external memory is freed when the image is shut down. I didn't want the PCRE2 objects to become unusable between sessions, so I added a "session manager" that restores the relevant objects automatically. That means PCRE2 objects based on external memory can be used like regular Pharo objects without having to care about the image lifecycle, which is something we take for granted but it's actually a bit special :) OpenTelemetry Link: https://github.com/Gabriel-Darbord/opentelemetry-pharo This project provides extensive coverage of the OpenTelemetry<https://opentelemetry.io/> specification (v1.58.0). Don't worry, I don't have as much to say about this one: if you're interested in observability, it should speak for itself. However, I'm still going to ramble a bit about how this came to be. This started a couple of years ago (a bit earlier than PCRE2), and it was simply a wrapper over instrumentation libraries: MetaLink<https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/blob/Pharo14/src/Reflectivity/MetaLi…>, and later, MethodProxies<https://github.com/pharo-contributions/MethodProxies>. I only used it to capture method receivers, arguments, and results in traces in order to generate regression tests, so it was pretty bare-bones. A few people reached out and I saw there was demand for telemetry capabilities in Pharo, but I simply didn't have the time to invest in this library, which was really just a shim to achieve my test generation goals. Now that I'm free of those goals, and thanks to agents, I found the time and manbotpower to get this done to a degree I find satisfactory. I've only mentioned instrumentation, which is used to run arbitrary code on method edges (before or after), without having to modify the targeted methods. This library also supports manual instrumentation<https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/glossary/#manual-instrumentation>: you can modify your methods anywhere in their body to code against the OpenTelemetry API and generate telemetry data. — I'm also taking this opportunity to share some unstable projects (as in still in alpha) that may also be of interest. Replay Link: https://github.com/Gabriel-Darbord/Replay About: Replay user actions in a Pharo image. I started this to help a friend who wanted to run an experiment and needed a guided walkthrough of their program to teach users. You can build/record scenarios that open and close windows, annotate a part of their interface, click, type, navigate, use shortcuts, etc. Scenarios can be made into macros and bound to a shortcut of your choosing. This is the project I used to showcase PCRE2 during "Show Us Your Project", if you were wondering how that was done :) For the story (because I can't help myself from rambling), I had some ambitions to make this into a GUI-testing framework, but then news about Hera<https://github.com/koendehondt/hera-for-pharo> dropped so I stopped working on this side project, until recently with agents and you know the rest... (note: Replay is not a GUI-testing framework!) Pharo-Image-FS Link: https://github.com/Evref-BL/pharo-image-fs About: Mount a live Pharo image as a local filesystem. Note: macOS only for now. Agents have been a recurring theme in my projects presented so far, and that's because I've been using them extensively since April. I found that some of the main things to watch with agents are code quality, i.e. writing maintainable code, and efficiency, i.e. using as few tokens as possible to achieve a task. I'm taking this opportunity to plug this presentation I gave to the Evref team in July: Using Pharo with LLMs: Retrospective of a 3-month journey<https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/using-pharo-with-llms-retrospective-of…>. I've mainly been using our MCP, and for the quality aspect: - The MCP proposes an AGENTS.md<https://github.com/Evref-BL/MCP/blob/main/templates/AGENTS.md> file that references Pharo coding rules<https://github.com/Evref-BL/MCP/blob/main/docs/user/pharo-coding-rules.md> and styles<https://github.com/Evref-BL/MCP/blob/main/docs/user/pharo-coding-style.md> based on literature<https://github.com/Evref-BL/MCP/blob/main/docs/dev/pharo-guidance-bibliogra…>. - We take advantage of the critique system, plus custom critiques, to give feedback to agents after each method modification. Regarding the efficiency aspect, the increasing cost of agents is making MCP-based workflows more and more expensive to use, compared to the basic filesystem and CLI-based tools that come with most coding agents by default. Agents are used to these tools and can use them without making mistakes about their schemas. Thus, I wanted a way to let agents code live in Pharo with those tools, which means making them work with files. After some research, I found FUSE<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace> (Filesystem in Userpace) that seems to be one of the most appropriate ways to achieve this, compared to others such as WebDAV or NFS. FUSE lets us create a filesystem projection with a backend in a Pharo image. The mounted filesystem includes: - `tonel/`: the whole image is projected in Tonel format. It lazily exports Tonel only for accessed classes, and accepts writes only when they compile. - `critiques/`: read-only directory populated by critiques generated during edits. - `repositories/`: read-only directory containing metadata and symlinks to repositories loaded in the image. - `errors/`: read-only directory with error logs of filesystem operations, e.g. explaining why a write failed. It's working well for me so far: it allows agents to read and write quickly, and use the tools they are used to, such as `find` and `rg`. It also pairs well with the MCP, which proposes IDE tools to run tests, resolve symbols (finding senders/implementors/references), load projects, debug, etc. — Thanks for your attention! If any of these projects are useful to you, I’d be happy to hear your feedback or welcome contributions :) Cheers, Gabriel Darbord

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Understanding Pharo's Roadmap & Core Contribution Process: Internal vs. External Packages
by Huperniketes Aug. 28, 2026

Aug. 28, 2026

Hi Pharo Developers, I am looking to better understand the decision-making and planning process for the Pharo core image. I have a few architectural ideas and new feature concepts, and want to ensure I align with the community's vision or determine if I should build them independently. Could anyone share insights on the following: 1. The Core Decision Process: How are major changes to core classes, refactorings, or large feature additions typically proposed, debated, and approved? Is there a formal RFC/PIP (Pharo Improvement Proposal) process, or does this primarily happen via GitHub issue triage? 2. Prioritization & Roadmap: How does the Consortium or core team decide what gets integrated into the next major Pharo release versus what gets left to external ecosystems? 3. Contribution Best Practices: What is the recommended path for an individual contributor to pitch a significant design change? Should I present prototypes on this mailing list first, open a GitHub issue, or discuss it on Discord? Ultimately, my goal is to figure out whether my ideas belong as core contributions or if they are better suited as separate, independent libraries managed via Metacello. For greater context, I’m working on a Smalltalk environment where the current global system is broken up into separate projects: a Smalltalk OS or platform, a programming environment, and various apps. Thank you for your time and guidance! Warmest regards, Alfonso Guerra

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Re: [Cuis-dev] Smalltalk on Android and in the Browser
by Agustin Martinez Aug. 18, 2026

Aug. 18, 2026

Hi Juan, Thanks for the great feedback!! Vector engine plugin works in JS, and the do-it error on android was solved!! Also you can see the halos in Android. Rotating a window is possible in both projects. Best!! Agustin On Fri, Aug 14, 2026 at 4:50 PM Juan Vuletich <juan(a)cuis.st> wrote: > Hi Agustín, > > This is very impressive! > > I just tried the Android VM on my Samsung phone. It works amazingly well. > I haven't been able to run Cuis on a phone in a long time. This is great! > Performance is impressive. I get 724 megaBytecodes/second and 40 > megasends/second. This is similar to what I get on a RasPi 3B+. Vector > graphics plugin claims to be active, although I found no easy way to stress > it. Is there a way to get a halo on a morph? > > I also tried the SqueakJS, with the provided Cuis image. I tried it both > on Firefox and Chrome on a Mac. It starts and the menus and tools seem to > work, but I get a primitive failure if I try any DoIt. Is this a known > issue? Does it work for you? If so, in which platform / os / browsers have > you tested? As I could not evaluate or edit code, I could not test > performance. Morphic halos work, but it seems the VectorGraphicsPlugin is > not available, as it doesn't show the scale halo for SystemWindows. > > Thanks! > On 2026-08-10 7:33 PM, Agustin Martinez via Cuis-dev wrote: > > Hi, I'd like to share two projects related to Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo. > > The first is a fork of the SqueakJS project, which lets you run the latest > versions of Pharo, Squeak, and Cuis, and includes performance and UX > improvements. > > smalltalkjsvm.com.ar > > The second is a version of OpenSmalltalk for Android where you can run > Squeak and Cuis. It was developed with help from FAST.org.ar. > > https://github.com/agustincico/opensmalltalk-android > > All feedback is welcome. There's always room for improvement. > > Best regards, > > Agustín > > > -- > Juan Vuletichwww.cuis.stgithub.com/jvuletichresearchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuleti… > >

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