I may have discovered a bug in the PharoVM (stable and latest), which may have been around for at least two years (I had a very similiar situation about two years ago with Fuel).

I have a test that fails when a particular method contains ���3 timesRepeat: [ Smalltalk garbageCollect ]���. In order to be sure that it��� not the #timesRepeat message that���s causing the crash, I replaced that with multiple ���Smalltalk garbageCollect��� sends.

The test I���m talking about ObsoleteTest>>testFixObsoleteSharedPools. To make the test crash the VM, simply add a couple of garbageCollects at the end of SmalltalkImage>>fixObsoleteSharedPools. I tried to come up with a little script to demonstrate the issue but I can only reproduce the problem with Nautilus (which makes me suspect that the problem is related to Nautilus).

Steps to reproduce:

1. get a fresh image and  the latest vm:

curl get.pharo.org/40+vmLastest | bash && ./pharo-ui Pharo.image

2. open the class browser and navigate to SmalltalkImage>>fixObsoleteSharedPools

3. Append ten ���self garbageCollect��� statements to the method.

4. navigate to ObsoleteTest>>testFixObsoleteSharedPools and click on the test runner icon to the left of the method name.

I can reproduce this with the Mac VM (OS X 10.10) as well as with the linux VM (Ubuntu 12.04.1).

I���ve opened an issue for this: https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/14478/Reproducible-VM-crash-with-excessive-garbage-collection

Cheers,

Max