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Epicea user experience report
by Ben Coman Feb. 27, 2017

Feb. 27, 2017

1. Created fresh Pharo image (build 60269) 2. Opened World > Tools > Epicea > All changes Points for discussion... a. How many submenu items are expected for Epicea? Can we push the current ones up so the Tools menu remains a flat menu. b. Do we need the two current menu items? "Current session" is encompassed by "All changes"? What expectations do people have of how often they'll use the former rather than the latter? c. When people move from Pharo 5 to Pharo 6 and in a panic want to "recover changes" for a crashed image, they'll be looking for that familiar feature name, not a new app name. Could the app name be left out or placed in brackets "Changes (Epicea)". btw, the interface looks really slick! nice work. 3. Opened World > System Browser. 4. Added package AAA All Changes window - no dynamic change. On <refresh>, still no change, i.e. no sessions #New All Changes window - not visible, no sessions. 5. Added class AA. All Changes window - no dynamic change. On <refresh>, shows new session with AAA & AA. 5. Added method... AA>a ^'something' Prompted for author, entered 'BenComan' All Changes window with session selected - dynamic update showing AA>>a. 6. Added package BBB. All Changes window - no dynamic update. On <refresh>, BBB still not visible in session. 7. Added class A to package AAA. All Changes window - dynamic update showing A. On <refresh>, BBB still not visible in session. 8. Added class BB to package BBB. All Changes window - dynamic update showing BBB & BB. a. Package creation event seems not handled properly, being only pushed through when a class is created in it. b. Since there is a dynamic update for class and method modifications, could the session creation also dynamically update it UI. ----------- 9. Killed the vm from command line $ ps -ef | grep pharo $ kill 29349 Restarted Pharo image 10. World > Tools > Epica > All changes. Authorship is inconsistent: * AAA and AA have blank author * AA>>a, A, BBB, B have author 'BenComan'. a. I understand this follows on from Author not being requested until the first method was defined. Did the old changes track the author of packages and classes at all? b. Since Epicea can track package and class authors, can we trigger the author prompt earlier for them? 11. Selected all previous changes AAA, AA, AA>>a, A, BBB, BB and did <Apply Changes>. Prompted for author. Entered 'DrWho' Existing All Changes window - no change New All Changes window - shows new session with all six changes. Authorship is a little inconsistent: * AAA and AA have author 'Unknown'. * AA>>a, A, BBB, B have blank author. 12. Killed the vm from command line $ ps -ef | grep pharo $ kill 30696 Restarted Pharo image 13. World > Tools > Epica > All changes. Authorship is a little inconsistent: First session * AAA and AA have blank author * AA>>a, A, BBB, B have author 'BenComan'. Second session * AAA and AA have blank author * AA>>a, A, BBB, B have author 'DrWho'. a. Epicea changes are reapplied as the current author. This seems a semantic change from Pharo 5 where changes were reapplied as their original author. Is this accidental or by design? Can we have some community discussion on this point (I don't remember seeing any)? cheers -ben P.S. I'll wait to see what arises out of discussion before creating any issues.

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[ANN] Woden 2 first release for OS X and Linux
by Ronie Salgado Feb. 27, 2017

Feb. 27, 2017

Hello, Finally I am glad to announce a first release of Woden 2. I made a hopefully simplified process for loading Woden 2 out of the box. For loading and testing Woden 2, follow the instructions at: https://github.com/ronsaldo/woden2 In this release, I am not loading the level editor by default because it depends on an outdated version of Bloc. Until I fix the dependency problem of the Level editor, it will remain unusable. Because Woden 2 requires Metal on OS X, it requires 64 bits on OS X, which can be unstable. This is tested on OS X El Capitan. I do not know whether it will work or not on OS X Sierra. Best regards, Ronie [image: ImÃ¡genes integradas 1]

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Raw pane on byteStrings
by stepharong Feb. 26, 2017

Feb. 26, 2017

Hi I'm trying to debug citezen generation and I have to compare strings. Now I think that the raw views (in Pharo 50) is not good because we cannot see all the items in raw format. See the attachements. It jumps from 21 to 174 ... and what I want to see is of course in the middle. Is it me or there is something wrong there. Stef

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Spotter - menu items
by Ben Coman Feb. 26, 2017

Feb. 26, 2017

I happened to be Spotting for image saveXXX methods and at the top of results is #Menu + Save + Save as... + Save and quit Now what would be really nice is if the code pane showed the implementation of the menu item. Usually I resort to using Halos to inspect the menu item morph to view its implementation. On a slightly separate point, it feels awkward clicking Save in the Spotter search, since there is no visual feedback anything happened. I had to go back and experiment by choosing [Save as] to understand that clicking it actually executed it. Perhaps executing a menu item from Spotter could #inform: us that a menu item was executed. This is in spite that choosing [Save] from the World menu doesn't provide any feedback. I think that conforms to expected behaviour, but most other Spotter results only browse, not execute. Actually how many other Spotter extensions execute something? It is maybe potentially dangerous that it behaves differently to other results, and clicking on it (e.g. trying to expand it like other results) causes side effects. Perhaps the code pane showing the menu item implementation could have <Execute> and <Debug> buttons above it. cheers -ben

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Any idea for a cool name for the remote tool suite?
by stepharong Feb. 26, 2017

Feb. 26, 2017

Hi guys Since we will push the remote tools (videos/web...) I would like to get some ideas for a cool name. Any ideas? Because Pharmide (looks like medicine or chemical product). Since I vaguely remember some german Pharmide made me think about Fern(sehen) but this is not a good name. Stef --

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Build Pharo VM
by Guido Chari Feb. 26, 2017

Feb. 26, 2017

Hi, I am trying to compile the Pharo-VM but I was not able. Neither in OSX nor in Unix. I followed the instructions on https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm. In OSX the builder at the image level runs ok but I see no output at the build directory. In Unix, the files in the build directory were generated but then the building process fails because of some cmake files not found from one of the plugins. I am using the last version from the master repo. So my question is, any hints on what I am doing wrong? Are there any up to date documentation for building the vm? Best regards, Guido.

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GTInspector duplicates overriden extensions
by Peter Uhnak Feb. 25, 2017

Feb. 25, 2017

Hi, when I override a method with a GTInspector (because I need to change it), then inspector contains the extension twice. It seems Inspector scans the whole hierarchy of the inspected object for methods, but doesn't deduplicate them. Peter

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Catalog loading in Spotter
by Torsten Bergmann Feb. 24, 2017

Feb. 24, 2017

In the past in Pharo it was possible to open Spotter, type in the name of a framework/project to load from catalog, perform a search and just hit ENTER to easily install the project. This was following the Spotter idea that it is easy to access most informations of Pharo with the Spotter tool. There always was and still is a setting in "Settings" -> "Catalog" -> "Display catalog projects in Spotter". This setting is ENABLED BY DEFAULT but could be switched off in the settings tool or custom preference scripts if this is problematic for someone. Now in Pharo 6 there is an additional class "GTSpotterExtensionSettings" to activate/deactivate Spotter extensions. While nearly all of the Spotter extensions are enabled the one for the catalog integration is DISABLED BY DEFAULT. This leads to several effects: 1. While in the past it was possible in a fresh Pharo image to search and install out of the box it is (as of today in the not yet released Pharo 6) not possible anymore to quickly start by searching and installing from catalog using Spotter. 2. It is very confusing that in the settings "Display catalog projects in Spotter" is enabled but a search in Spotter gives no results. Most people will not not know about the second setting and easily get lost and think this behavior is just broken. Also this second setting for the Spotter extension is much more hidden between all the other Spotter extension enablements very and hard to find. 3. Several of my youtube videos demonstrating Goodies like DesktopManager, QuickAccess, MessageFlowBrowser, ... directly start by loading the tools from Spotter. Anyone newbee who will follow these will not only be confused - but also stuck in trying Pharo when he learns from these videos. I was asked several times on Slack and via Mail from people who were not able to reproduce ... this is really annyoing. Especially this gives the wrong impression to newbees. Things should be easy not complicated. To my knowledge disabling the Spotter search in Pharo 6 came up due to some Pharo teaching in regions with slow internet connection. I understand that we would like to support these Pharo users too as best as possible in their out of the box experience ... but (without being able to prove) I think that 90% or more Pharo users have a regular internet connection. Otherwise it would be hard to work with updates, project loading, PharoLauncher, STHub or Iceberg/GitHub. Also my own personal experience is that even on low bandwidth network this Catalog Spotter search for me was always fast enough (as I often use Pharo in trains with slow connections or on a Pi with slow connections and less processing power). I do not know about all others from the community. I invested hours in the past in developing and introducing the initial configuration browser to Pharo, later improved and helped shaping its replacement CatalogBrowser, also contributed this spotter search for the catalog items so things are more accessible, easy and enjoyable. That's why I also invested hours in udpating configs or pushing you to put things into catalog. Because accessibility is key. Only when things are easy to access and understandable people will enjoy Pharo. Currently in an out-of the box image this easy access to the projects via Spotter is blocked. Additionally I have to explain to anyone who asks me that there is a second non-obvious/more hidden setting leaving an unpleasant feeling how many others unknown to me will struggle with this issue. I see two solutions: A) We enable both settings by DEFAULT to bring back the Spotter search and installation of catalog items - with the clear benefit of having - the previous behavior in Pharo back - the out of the box ability to search for catalog projects in any fresh image - no confusion among the user base anymore regarding the settings - we have unbroken Youtube videos that newbees can continue to follow - if a user asks (like often) how to get Seaside, Artefact, Mongo, Teapot or other projects we can just tell him "search in Spotter and you should be fine" as most of them have a config in the catalog. Remember that not all of us know about all the github pages or nice Metacello expressions. So the easier things are found and accessible the better it is. B) If A is still a "No go" for the community we should at a minimum switch the defaults of the two settings: => we ENABLE the Spotter extension (GTSpotterExtensionSettings perform: #GTSpotter_spotterCatalogProjectsFor: with: true) => we DISABLE the catalog setting (CatalogSettings displayCatalogProjectsInSpotter: false) With this at least we have no confusion among the user base anymore regarding the settings. I would clearly and strongly vote for option A as my preferred one. I agree there are regions/continents with very low bandwidth - but Pharo will rival with state of the art technologies where loading/installation megabytes from the web is often not seen as an issue. There are many package registries out there (from debian packages) up to Maven, npm in JS, ... or look at Docker. Shuffling megabytes around is a reality in todays technologies. So to be honest I never understood this whole "bandwidth" discussion and even if this comes up it could be solved with a note in the download/welcome screen or pointing to a custom preference script for low bandwidth situations. Sorry for having to bring this up again ... but I would like this to be solved BEFORE Pharo 6 will be pushed out of the door. Keeping it like it is without further actions would be really stupid. Thanks for you comments, ideas or votes. Thanks T.

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Pharo 60 : 60410 DNU on commit and no idea how to copy the stack :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
by stepharong Feb. 24, 2017

Feb. 24, 2017

Pharo 6.0 Latest update: #60410 Hi Several points that we MUST improve - I often get an error when I save code. SubscriptOutOfBounds: 0 extent ^ self actualWidth ifNil: [ self minimumExtent ] ifNotNil: [ (self actualWidth + self margins left + self margins right) @ (self lines last bottom - self lines first top + self margins top + self margins bottom) ] In RubParagraph apparentl self lines last... tries to access the 0 indexed element :( - How do we get the old textual stack description? Now I wanted to report it and share with you the stack..... oh boy! I thought it was file out but no it just save one method definition (So great) I got Fuelout the stack in the menu but this is not what I want. :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( - Finally BTW I clicked on report and I have no idea what it does not mean. The fly by help is empty :((((( So like an idiot I did a screen capture. This broke totally my feel. In less than 10 min I left like either the system became less good or I'm totally stupid. Stef

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Pharo days 2017 at Lille: block the dates 18/19 of May
by stepharong Feb. 24, 2017

Feb. 24, 2017

Dear Pharoers Iâm happy to tell you that we will organise a new edition of the PharoDays at Lille the 18 et 19 of May. The program and registration will be announced soon. The setup will be similar to the ones of previous editions: Little cool presentations and hacking/discussions sessions and a great social event. https://medium.com/concerning-pharo/pharo-days-2016-c52fe4d7caf#.mqurj6rvi So reserve the dates. S. PS: for students, we got some sponsoring from inria and cristal and if you need support let us know.

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