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[ANN] Soil v5

by Norbert Hartl

We are happy to announce the availability of Soil version 5. What is new? Automatic change tracking: Soil now computes a recursive content hash for objects and uses it to detect modifications automatically. This removes the need for the explicit markDirty: calls that were previously required — something we called out as a goal back in the v4 announcement. Read-only transactions have been hardened: we now distinguish a transaction that is intentionally read-only from one that just happens to end up with no changes, and read-only transactions abort automatically instead of committing a no-op. Indexed collections (SoilPersistentDictionary and indexed dictionaries) can now be used as non-root objects, not just at the root of the database. A first working garbage collector has landed — a preview, not a finished feature: Soil>>garbageCollect compacts object segments offline by cloning and atomically swapping them in. There's also a new opt-in Soil>>checkConsistency you can run separately without slowing down the GC itself. The data-layer primitives for a future online/segment-based GC are also in place, though not yet wired up. A new SoilCommitError hierarchy lets you catch any commit-time failure with one exception class instead of several unrelated ones. A good number of crash and silent-data-corruption fixes, notably around the graph exporter/importer, backup version history, and depth-first traversal. Full changelog: https://github.com/ApptiveGrid/Soil/blob/main/docs/versions/changelog-v5.md I also wrote up the release on the blog, with a bit more context: https://norbert.hartl.name/blog/2026-07-29_soil-v5-released.html What is planned next? Integrating the Windows support work that's already sitting there Process-specific variables A preview of an online GC, building on the primitives that landed in v5 Multi-index collections and partial indexes (carried over from v4's plan) Hope you like it. Give it a spin and then tell us! Norbert & Marcus

July 29, 2026

[ANN] JSONSchema: bringing test suite conformance up

by Norbert Hartl

Hi , quick announcement: JSONSchema (https://github.com/zweidenker/JSONSchema) just got a real conformance push against the official Test-Suite (https://github.com/json-schema-org/JSON-Schema-Test-Suite) Udo ported that suite into Pharo a while back — over 1000 individual test methods — but it sat mostly unexplored until now. Claude and me went through it bucket by bucket and moved from roughly a third of the suite genuinely passing to about two-thirds: boolean schemas, oneOf/anyOf/not/pattern, dependencies, const, contains, patternProperties, if/then/else, tuple-shaped items, and a long list of format validators. For more information I’ve wrote an article: https://norbert.hartl.name/blog/2026-07-28_jsonschema-picked-back-up.html Feedback welcome, as always. Norbert

July 28, 2026

Mailinglists: Moving to new system

by Marcus Denker

Hi, We are moving the Pharo lists to a new setup. I will send another mail when this is done (end of the week latest). The lists will continue to work, but the archives will be migrated with a certain export date (I guess today). Marcus

July 28, 2026

[ANN] pharo-cig FFI bindings for libcurl

by Esteban Lorenzano

Hello, I am publishing bindings for libcurl at pharo-cig. Technically, this is not new as I generate the recipe and the bindings almost one year ago... but I forgot to commit it, as it was made while making tests on how to handle variadics :) I think the library can be useful, even if we do not need it for most common cases (we already have Zinc/Zodiac to handle downloads), but it may be useful in certain cases (e.g. to download in parallel, without putting pressure in the image, etc.). libcurl bindings are now part of the garden: https://github.com/pharo-cig/pharo-libcurl Esteban

July 14, 2026

Re: Kent Beck re AI and software

by Aik-Siong Koh

Another view is "It it works who cares." Nicolas Anquetil wrote: > > [Beck] /core advice for the current moment is : try many cheap, stupid > ideas and start over without hesitation./ > > interesting article with inspiring views of Software engineering > > /The real work of building software, he argues, has never been the > coding. It has been building trust â trust that the program does what > it should, trust among teammates that the design makes sense, trust > with users that the system won't fail them. > > /[With AI] /"We're accumulating code faster than we're accumulating > trust," Beck said. > Coding is a small fraction of the activity. The rest â building > confidence, connections, and shared understanding â cannot be > outsourced to a tool that simply returns finished code. > > > /nicolas/ > / > On 7/7/26 14:49, Aik-Siong Koh wrote: >> https://finance.biggo.com/news/9097cf7df0ff00c3 > > -- > Nicolas Anquetil > Evref team -- Inria Lille >

July 8, 2026

Re: Kent Beck re AI and software

by Nicolas Anquetil

[Beck] /core advice for the current moment is : try many cheap, stupid ideas and start over without hesitation./ interesting article with inspiring views of Software engineering /The real work of building software, he argues, has never been the coding. It has been building trust â trust that the program does what it should, trust among teammates that the design makes sense, trust with users that the system won't fail them. /[With AI] /"We're accumulating code faster than we're accumulating trust," Beck said. Coding is a small fraction of the activity. The rest â building confidence, connections, and shared understanding â cannot be outsourced to a tool that simply returns finished code. /nicolas/ / On 7/7/26 14:49, Aik-Siong Koh wrote: > https://finance.biggo.com/news/9097cf7df0ff00c3 -- Nicolas Anquetil Evref team -- Inria Lille

July 8, 2026

Kent Beck re AI and software

by Aik-Siong Koh

https://finance.biggo.com/news/9097cf7df0ff00c3

July 7, 2026

Re: ANN: Experimental flatpak pharo vm v10.3.9

by Martin Dias

Same: $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo Pharo.image --interactive [ERROR] 2026-07-03 09:42:36.000 loadPharoImage (src/client.c:218):Image file not found: No such file or directory [ERROR] 2026-07-03 09:42:36.000 runVMThread (src/client.c:239):Error opening image file: Pharo.image I'll ask you via Discord El vie, 3 jul 2026 a la(s) 1:15â¯a.m., Esteban Lorenzano (estebanlm(a)netc.eu) escribiÃ³: > did you try > > flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo YourImage.image --interactive > > ? > > > On 7/3/26 03:53, Martin Dias wrote: > > Hi Esteban, > > Looks great, thanks. > > However, I got an error :) After following the instructions to install the > flatpak, it looks installed successfully: > > $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo --version > Pharo v12.0.3-beta Compiler: 15.2.0 > Built from: v12.0.3-beta+0.2aa4b7c - Commit: 2aa4b7c - Date: 2026-06-03 > 15:53:56 +0200 > > Then I downloaded a Pharo image but get this error: > > $ curl https://get.pharo.org/140 | bash > $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo Pharo.image > [ERROR] 2026-07-02 21:45:48.000 loadPharoImage (src/client.c:218):Image > file not found: No such file or directory > [ERROR] 2026-07-02 21:45:48.000 runVMThread (src/client.c:239):Error > opening image file: Pharo.image > > I tried with variants such as full path and get the same: > $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo "/tmp/Pharo.image" > > $ uname -a > Linux x 6.1.0-49-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.174-1 > (2026-05-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux > > Any idea? > > Martin > > El mar, 2 jun 2026 a la(s) 6:16â¯a.m., Esteban Lorenzano via Pharo-dev ( > pharo-dev(a)lists.pharo.org) escribiÃ³: > >> Hello, >> >> As some of you may know, Iâve been working on a Flatpak for the Pharo VM. >> After some work, I think I finally have a version thatâs ready to be >> tested, so please give it a try! >> >> You can find it here: https://forge.smallworks.eu/pharo/pharo-vm-flatpak >> Just follow the installation instructions in the repo. >> >> A few notes: >> >> - >> >> This is still a regular Pharo VM, but the bundled dependencies are >> the ones used by Pharo 14. This matters especially for Iceberg, since it >> uses libgit2 1.9.4. >> - >> >> For FFI, I had to update UnifiedFFI in Pharo 14 so it can find >> libraries in the right places. Since Flatpak runs in a sandbox, host >> libraries, when needed, are exposed under /run/host/.... The Pharo >> run script already adapts LD_LIBRARY_PATH for this, but uFFI does not >> use it. >> - >> >> This is a full VM with quite a few dependencies, including the GNOME >> runtime, because it is also part of another project that needs them. You >> can snoop around the repo, or wait for my ESUG talk to hear more about >> that. ;) >> - >> >> I tested it on my own Arch system and on Ubuntu 24. That said, it may >> still need some tweaks on other systems, or even on different machines >> running those same systems, so please let me know how it goes. :) >> >> Cheers ! >> Esteban >> >

July 3, 2026

Re: ANN: Experimental flatpak pharo vm v10.3.9

by Esteban Lorenzano

did you try flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo YourImage.image --interactive ? On 7/3/26 03:53, Martin Dias wrote: > Hi Esteban, > > Looks great, thanks. > > However, I got an error :) After following the instructions to install > the flatpak, it looks installed successfully: > > $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo --version > Pharo v12.0.3-beta Compiler: 15.2.0 > Built from: v12.0.3-beta+0.2aa4b7c - Commit: 2aa4b7c - Date: > 2026-06-03 15:53:56 +0200 > > Then I downloaded a Pharo image but get this error: > > $ curl https://get.pharo.org/140 | bash > $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo Pharo.image > [ERROR] 2026-07-02 21:45:48.000 loadPharoImage > (src/client.c:218):Image file not found: No such file or directory > [ERROR] 2026-07-02 21:45:48.000 runVMThread (src/client.c:239):Error > opening image file: Pharo.image > > I tried with variants such as full path and get the same: > $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo "/tmp/Pharo.image" > > $ uname -a > Linux x 6.1.0-49-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.174-1 > (2026-05-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux > > Any idea? > > Martin > > El mar, 2 jun 2026 a la(s) 6:16â¯a.m., Esteban Lorenzano via Pharo-dev > (pharo-dev(a)lists.pharo.org) escribiÃ³: > > Hello, > > As some of you may know, Iâve been working on a Flatpak for the > Pharo VM. After some work, I think I finally have a version thatâs > ready to be tested, so please give it a try! > > You can find it here: > https://forge.smallworks.eu/pharo/pharo-vm-flatpak > Just follow the installation instructions in the repo. > > A few notes: > > * > > This is still a regular Pharo VM, but the bundled dependencies > are the ones used by Pharo 14. This matters especially for > Iceberg, since it uses libgit2 1.9.4. > > * > > For FFI, I had to update UnifiedFFI in Pharo 14 so it can find > libraries in the right places. Since Flatpak runs in a > sandbox, host libraries, when needed, are exposed under > |/run/host/...|. The Pharo run script already adapts > |LD_LIBRARY_PATH| for this, but uFFI does not use it. > > * > > This is a full VM with quite a few dependencies, including the > GNOME runtime, because it is also part of another project that > needs them. You can snoop around the repo, or wait for my ESUG > talk to hear more about that. ;) > > * > > I tested it on my own Arch system and on Ubuntu 24. That said, > it may still need some tweaks on other systems, or even on > different machines running those same systems, so please let > me know how it goes. :) > > Cheers ! > Esteban >

July 3, 2026

Re: ANN: Experimental flatpak pharo vm v10.3.9

by Martin Dias

Hi Esteban, Looks great, thanks. However, I got an error :) After following the instructions to install the flatpak, it looks installed successfully: $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo --version Pharo v12.0.3-beta Compiler: 15.2.0 Built from: v12.0.3-beta+0.2aa4b7c - Commit: 2aa4b7c - Date: 2026-06-03 15:53:56 +0200 Then I downloaded a Pharo image but get this error: $ curl https://get.pharo.org/140 | bash $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo Pharo.image [ERROR] 2026-07-02 21:45:48.000 loadPharoImage (src/client.c:218):Image file not found: No such file or directory [ERROR] 2026-07-02 21:45:48.000 runVMThread (src/client.c:239):Error opening image file: Pharo.image I tried with variants such as full path and get the same: $ flatpak run org.pharo.Pharo "/tmp/Pharo.image" $ uname -a Linux x 6.1.0-49-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.174-1 (2026-05-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux Any idea? Martin El mar, 2 jun 2026 a la(s) 6:16â¯a.m., Esteban Lorenzano via Pharo-dev ( pharo-dev(a)lists.pharo.org) escribiÃ³: > Hello, > > As some of you may know, Iâve been working on a Flatpak for the Pharo VM. > After some work, I think I finally have a version thatâs ready to be > tested, so please give it a try! > > You can find it here: https://forge.smallworks.eu/pharo/pharo-vm-flatpak > Just follow the installation instructions in the repo. > > A few notes: > > - > > This is still a regular Pharo VM, but the bundled dependencies are the > ones used by Pharo 14. This matters especially for Iceberg, since it uses > libgit2 1.9.4. > - > > For FFI, I had to update UnifiedFFI in Pharo 14 so it can find > libraries in the right places. Since Flatpak runs in a sandbox, host > libraries, when needed, are exposed under /run/host/.... The Pharo run > script already adapts LD_LIBRARY_PATH for this, but uFFI does not use > it. > - > > This is a full VM with quite a few dependencies, including the GNOME > runtime, because it is also part of another project that needs them. You > can snoop around the repo, or wait for my ESUG talk to hear more about > that. ;) > - > > I tested it on my own Arch system and on Ubuntu 24. That said, it may > still need some tweaks on other systems, or even on different machines > running those same systems, so please let me know how it goes. :) > > Cheers ! > Esteban >

July 3, 2026