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A/B Testing the latest VM on the Pharo repository PRs
by Guillermo Polito Sept. 14, 2022

Sept. 14, 2022

Hi all, TL;DR; I propose we start testing the latest VMs on PRs to the Pharo repository in a "semi-randomâ way. The idea is to earn some confidence while having a small impact on all of you. ==== We need to slowly start pushing the latest VM version, right now hosted in the pharoX branch of the VM repository. This branch so far has all our latest work on the VM for at least one year. Some highlights Interpreter variable auto-localization (Feat/automatic localizationÂ pharo-vm#371 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/371>) Slang cleanups and improvements (Clean slang warningsÂ pharo-vm#413 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/413>, Fix while statement printingÂ pharo-vm#265 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/265>, CastÂ pharo-vm#230 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/230>, Clean slang warningsÂ pharo-vm#413 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/413>, Switch translation to CAST, and testsÂ pharo-vm#311 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/311>, Add several CAST translations and testsÂ pharo-vm#307 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/307>, Fix type inference testsÂ pharo-vm#291 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/291>) SIMD support in the JIT (Speed up object initialization in AArch64 using SIMD instructionsÂ pharo-vm#421 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/421>, SIMD bytecodesÂ pharo-vm#444 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/444>) Initial work on the perm space (Composed image formatÂ pharo-vm#377 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/377>, Composed image format: C translationÂ pharo-vm#388 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/388>, Refactoring of Snapshot and Loading of ImagesÂ pharo-vm#372 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/372>, Perm space on imageÂ pharo-vm#416 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/416>, New & old remembered setsÂ pharo-vm#418 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/418>) Many many bugfixes â¦ To not disrupt anybodyâs work, I propose to make some kind of AB testing on the CI, only impacting PRs to the Pharo repository. odd builds (1,3,5,â¦) use the latest VM even builds (2,4,6,â¦) use the stable VM This will make sure that: the latest VM will be tested in a complex scenario (load code, run testsâ¦) people that have a problem can re-run their builds to get a stable run Iâve made the following PR that follows this idea https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11678 G

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This week (36/2022) on the Pharo Issue Tracker
by Marcus Denker Sept. 12, 2022

Sept. 12, 2022

We merged 24 PRs last week. Features ======== [improvement] add microsecond to API #11493 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11493 - adding entries in the debug world menu to enable / disable all breakpoints in the image #11614 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11614 - Adding an API in OCBytecodeToASTCache, RBMethodNode and RBBlockNode to map AST nodes to a pc range. #11651 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11651 Speed ===== - 11597-RPackagetoTagName-possibly-creates-an-extra-symbol #11604 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11604 Git/Iceberg =========== - Treat trait class side definitions like class class side definitions too #1609 https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/pull/1609 - Fix/1426: ZnInvalidUTF8 when reading a commit message #1611 https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/pull/1611 - When the remote server cuts the connection or there is an issue in thâ¦ #1613 https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/pull/1613 - Only compute critiques when needed #1610 https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/pull/1610 Fixes ===== - 11635-Compiler-eval-an-expression-with-halt-and-bindings-opens-Emergency-Evaluator #11637 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11637 - Attempt to fix scrolling behavior in RubAbstractTextArea & friends #11583 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11583 - Fix leaking subscriptions in SpRubFindReplaceService #11608 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11608 - Make explicit hostname and port work with bitbucket #11585 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11585 - Fix behavior of sum: on collections of doubles #11600 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11600 - FTTableMorph: Allow expansion/collapse of nodes using arrow keys #11644 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11644 - [Quick review] fix #11265: Underscore in class name breaks text completion #11487 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11487 - FTTableMorph: Pass some keyboard events to the filter field if it is focused #11647 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11647 Cleanup ======= - RubAbstractTextArea: Avoid a superfluous isNotNil in handleEdit: #11645 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11645 - Cleanups necessary in FreeType #11636 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11636 - 11558-leadingChar-is-provided-but-unused #11654 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11654 Comments ========= - Expand class comment for Set #11642 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11642 - Update vm links with the new pharo-vm repo #11652 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11652 - 11612-RBComment-class-comment #11653 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11653 Pharo 10 ======== - backportPharo10-11635-Compiler-eval-an-expression #11638 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11638 Pharo 9 ======== - Use iceberg 2.0.5.1 #11596 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11596

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Equality/Hash Modification and Image Rehashing
by sean＠clipperadams.com Sept. 7, 2022

Sept. 7, 2022

>From Pharo Discord: IIUC when I change the comparison behavior of a class (i.e. reimplement #= and #hash), sets containing those objects start acting oddly e.g. happily storing duplicates of equal objects and failing to find objects they contain. A solution seems to be Set allSubInstances do: #rehash. Is my understanding correct? If so, I find it odd that I've been using and researching Smalltalk for well over a decade and I never remember reading/hearing about this. I wonder if it can be baked into the IDE somehow e.g. via a critic... And stephan responded: > The mailing list posts about that I remember were at the time where the number of object bits used for the hash were increased. --- Following up on his clue, I found [this old post](https://lists.pharo.org/empathy/thread/LKCE5UXYPXPLVOGNZYW64BWHYJY5NM… "this old post"), which seems to confirm my suspicion. This seems like a serious trap for users to fall into (Iâm having flashbacks to my C++ days lol). So, can/should we somehow handle this in the IDE? Something like a refactoring (that has a confirmation window) that gives you the choice to rehash image collections when redefining these methods? In a 1GB image, \`Set allSubInstances do: #rehash\` is almost instantaneous and \`Dictionary allSubInstances do: #rehash\` takes several seconds.

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Smalltalks Workshop 2022: call for papers!
by Mariano Martinez Peck Sept. 5, 2022

Sept. 5, 2022

Greetings everyone, This year, in addition to traditional technical talks, FAST has organized a Workshop [1] where researchers are invited to submit papers, which will be evaluated by specialized reviewers. We have chosen the Workshop format to let authors get early qualified feedback of their work without preventing them from presenting in other conferences or publications, since this format does not imply exclusive submission. [1] https://smalltalks2022.fast.org.ar/registration/call-for-papers Greetings, -- Mariano Martinez Peck Email: marianopeck(a)gmail.com Twitter: @MartinezPeck LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mariano-martinez-peck <https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariano-mart%C3%ADnez-peck/> Blog: https://marianopeck.wordpress.com/

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This week (35/2022) on the Pharo Issue Tracker
by Marcus Denker Sept. 2, 2022

Sept. 2, 2022

Fixes ===== - Revert "Optimize setting of initial position in PositionableStream>>on:" #11606 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11606 - OSSDL2FormRenderer: Release texture manually to avoid spike in memory usage #11610 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11610 - OSSDL2FormRenderer: Fix DNU on start #11617 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11617 - Fixing Broken Refactoring Test #11619 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11619 - SpRubFindReplaceDialog: Clear selection on close #11602 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11602 Speedup ======= - Improving the speed of the compiler when compiling methods with a lot of literals #11615 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11615 Cleanups ======== - Categorize test classes. No modification #11607 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11607 - Small cleanups in fluid builders #11628 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11628 - FluidBuilder should be abstract #11626 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11626 - Cleanup: remove Point3 class #11624 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11624 - Small cleanups in FluidClassBuilder-Tests package #11632 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11632 - Rename temp variable in RBScanner(class)>>#on: method #11547 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11547

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Change notification: squeaksource.com migration to new service provider today
by David T. Lewis Aug. 31, 2022

Aug. 31, 2022

As part of an overall project to move squeak.org services to a new service provider (hetzner.com) the https://squeaksource.com server will be migrated today, 31 August, beginning at 20:00 UTC. Due to time required for DNS updates to propagate, the change will take effect over a number of hours (expect up to one day). This is the general purpose squeaksource.com server, and does not affect http://source.squeak.org, which will be migrated separately at a later date. What you need to know: For most people, no change will be noticed. Read access to repositories will continue with little or no interruption. If you are committing updates to existing projects, there is a risk of those updates being committed to the "wrong" server during the transition period. No data or files will be lost, but some updates may need to be re-applied. The squeaksource.com administrator will be watching for this and will either fix any missing updates or request the affected project administrator to do so. If you are a project administrator or if you are planning to create a new project on squeaksource.com, please avoid making changes during the transition period. In the event of problems, please report the concern here on the squeak-dev list. If you do not have access to that list, you can report the concern to lewis(a)mail.msen.com. Dave

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Platform Packages vs. Git Branches
by sean＠clipperadams.com Aug. 30, 2022

Aug. 30, 2022

Iâve always supported multiple platforms (e.g. different Pharo versions) via packages like MyProject-Plaform-Pharo9. Thinking back, the primary reason is that is how I saw it done by other projects. Also, I adopted the practice well before git was in wide use in the Pharo world. However, Jan Bliznicenko recently suggested an alternate workflow which sounds like how Pharo itself is managed: use git branches, with the primary branch supporting only latest Pharo, and other branches only getting critical bug fixes backported. Not sure how that would work for projects that support other dialects e.g. Gemstone and Squeak, since there would then be multiple âlatest versionsâ. Iâm interested in opinions about these options as I feel that Magritte is an important community asses and want to keep it compatible on as many platforms as possible (with as little work as possible)! I also get the feeling that many people keep ancient systems in production, and I wonder which they would prefer - a project that is stable on a Pharo version (more or less) when that version is released or having the latest commits, especially bug fixes. Thoughts?

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This week (34/2022) on the Pharo Issue Tracker MD Marcus Denker
by Marcus Denker Aug. 26, 2022

Aug. 26, 2022

We merged 28 PRs this week: Improvements ============ - Optimize setting of initial position in PositionableStream>>on: #11555 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11555 - Rotten green tests plugin for DrTests #11513 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11513 Git Support ========= - Updating Libgit2 Bindings to version 2.2.6 #1605 https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/pull/1605 - Fix Pharo's #11370: Cannot commit when adding a class instance variable #1597 https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/pull/1597 - Update Iceberg to 2.0.8 #11581 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11581 Cleanups ======== - Cleanup typo in ASTCache>>#at: #11557 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11557 - README.md and Bootstrap cleanup #11453 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11453 - Update class comment of AsciiCharSet #11575 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11575 - Class comment for RBCommentToken #11571 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11571 - Categorize RBShortAssignmentToken>>#length like superclass #11569 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11569 - Just some formatting in a package comment #11560 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11560 - RBScanner>>#isSelectorNonBinary improve with script: pragma #11567 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11567 - Enhance isUnary method comment #11541 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11541 - Fixes: #11526 and #11527: Refactoring2-core merge and baseline fix #11529 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11529 - Typo in class comment of AllProtocol #11573 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11573 - Cleanup AthensBalloonPaint and AthensBalloonGradientPaint #11579 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11579 - Small cleanups in Object #11594 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11594 - Improve #basicSize documentation and add tests #11590 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11590 - Cleanup ReferenceFinder>>#searchIndicesIn: #11592 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11592 - Removed empty abstractCompletionEngine class #11562 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11562 - Stream should be declared as abstract class #11553 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11553 - PositionableStream should be declared as abstract class #11551 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11551 - EncodedCharSet should return true for #isAbstract #11549 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11549 Pharo10 ======= - Updating version of Iceberg to 2.0.7, for libgit 1.4.4 -- Backport to Pharo 10 #11545 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11545 - Creates Graphical UI for AndreasProfiler and TimeProfiler #11532 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11532 Pharo9 ======= - Upgrade iceberg to 2.0.7 -- backport to Pharo 9 #11546 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11546 - Update Iceberg to 2.0.8 #11582 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11582

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Status update of Libgit2 and CI issues
by Guillermo Polito Aug. 23, 2022

Aug. 23, 2022

A couple of weeks ago we got reported a big recurrent failure on CI jobs while cloning using iceberg/libgit https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/issues/11481. TL;DR; So far (Friday ~17h Paris time) we managed to get everything up and running. A new VM is being released by our CI, all pull requests are issued and we should have everything integrated by tonight. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-= More on the situation: Errors happened randomly with ``` error reading from the zlib stream ``` or ``` bad packet length ``` Several people helped in getting a reliable script to reproduce the issue, plus some instructions to produce a reproduction environment using a docker container. With that in our hands, we managed to corner the issue to a new incompatibility between old libgit2 versions, ssh2, OpenSSL, and (at least) Github. After testing some configurations, we decided to upgrade the libgit and related binaries to newer versions: - libgit 1.4.4 - libssh 1.9.0 - OpenSSL 1.1.1k This was of course not as straightforward as we would have liked. Libgit2 1.4.4 was not compatible with its older versions and broke our ffi bindings. We needed to provide new VM binaries for all our major platforms, make a new VM release, upgrade the libgit2 bindings, and make releases of the libgit2 bindings, iceberg, and backport to Pharo 10 and Pharo 9. TL;DR; So far (Friday ~17h Paris time) we managed to get everything up and running. A new VM is being released by our CI, all pull requests are issued and we should have everything integrated by tonight. Libgit+related compilation instructions are updated in the VM wiki https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/wiki/Building-OSX-ARM64-Third-Par… https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/wiki/Building-OSX-X86_64-Third-Pa… https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/wiki/Building-Linux-ARM64-Third-P… https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/wiki/Building-Linux-ARM32-Third-P… Libgit bindings Upgrade changes: https://github.com/pharo-vcs/libgit2-pharo-bindings/commit/0e0100f7d0f3a11c… release: https://github.com/pharo-vcs/libgit2-pharo-bindings/releases/tag/v2.2.6 Iceberg Upgrade pr: https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/pull/1605 release: https://github.com/pharo-vcs/iceberg/releases/tag/v2.0.7 Upgrading library dependencies in the VM https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/pull/447 Release VM 9.0.16 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/releases/tag/v9.0.16 Backports to Pharo Pharo10 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11545 Pharo9 https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/11546 We have left for later to upgrade library dependencies for the Windows VM (x86-64, ARM64). Of course, any help in this direction is welcome. Cheers, G in behalf of the team

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What, exactly, does `#=` mean?
by sean＠clipperadams.com Aug. 23, 2022

Aug. 23, 2022

Anyone know of a book that goes in depth explaining \`#=\`? I've always wondered what "equal" is supposed to mean. For example, if I have two objects representing the same person, but one has their webpage cached as state, they represent the same entity, and are interchangeable in many contexts, but also have a difference that may be important in other contexts. Is âequalâ whatever you say it is in your domain, or is it a Smalltalk object system concept? If the latter, what is the exact expectation?

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