October 2017 - Pharo-users - lists.pharo.org

perspective request for those earning a living from Smalltalk
by Ben Coman Nov. 10, 2017

Nov. 10, 2017

At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523807 the question is asked... "Does anyone on here program in Smalltalk professionally? Not to get off topic, but I'm curious and would like to know how it stacks up compared to what they did previously? " If you've earning a living from programming Smalltalk, please drop a comment there. cheers -ben

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including Pillar in Pharo image by default
by Peter Uhnak Nov. 10, 2017

Nov. 10, 2017

Hi, I would like to propose including Pillar in the Pharo image by default. My reasoning: Since we are moving to git, and most people will use github, gitlab, and the likes, it is expected to include a README.md file (or possibly more extensive documentation) alongside the code. Which means that people will (and are) writing the README mostly by hand, which of course is problematic, as e.g. code snippets can get deprecated, screenshots become outdated, etc. As Pillar tries to address these problems, it would make sense to me to include Pillar in the image by default, as anyone using git (which eventually should be everyone) will most likely benefit from writing their documentation in Pillar. Similarly using Pillar would open an avenue to provide the documentation in-image, e.g. one exporter for html/markdown, and another one for Pharo's Help system. I could, of course, install Pillar every time, but considering thats extra effort and in the extra time I can fix the issues by hand, I don't have such an incentive to use Pillar for this. Questions & Problems: I don't know by how much would pillar increase the image size. Perhaps there could be (a) "lightweight Pillar" (that would include just pillar & markdown exporter), or (b) we would have different images for different uses. By different images I mean something along the lines of a) developer image - meant to be directly used by developers to create their software b) production image - as a foundation for running systems / users Does this make sense? Peter

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UFFI with asynchronous callbacks
by Jan Cada Nov. 8, 2017

Nov. 8, 2017

Hi, I would like to connect fingerprint reader to pharo - so far I am able to use C library to connect to it using UFFI, however the problem is that I can wait for fingerprint indefinitely ( blocking call to library) or register call-back for moment when fingerprint is available. The registration function returns immediately, so it is clear that the callback will be called from another thread. Is such situation supported by UFFI ? Thanks for any tip, Jan

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Smalltalk Argument
by Paulo R. Dellani Nov. 8, 2017

Nov. 8, 2017

Dear all, after using Smalltalk for several years I developed a passion for the language (how not to?), and Pharo is just so great to develop with. So thank you guys for keeping this wonderful project running. Unfortunately, it is not easy to always point out why Smalltalk should be employed as "main development language" in a team or for a project. In the last discussion of this sort I was confronted with the question "where are we going to get new smalltalk developers if our startup grows or if you go?". Well, I had no good answer to that. What would have you answered? Cheers, Paulo

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UFFI and Fortran
by horrido Nov. 8, 2017

Nov. 8, 2017

Can UFFI be used to call into a Fortran library? -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

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Re: [Pharo-users] [Pharo-dev] [ANNOUNCE] ParrotTalk release/design change considerations
by henry Nov. 5, 2017

Nov. 5, 2017

I disabled vatId authorization in version 3, located in SessionOperations>>processIWant | SessionOperations>>processIAm:. I was asked to disseminate my news to Pharo Users, hello there. I was asked to describe ParrotTalk well, provide use cases and adopters of its use. Alright, I will give an attempt. ParrotTalk is an encrypted connection framework. Currently allowing anonymous 2048-bit key negotiation to establish user-provided encryption cipher and user-provided encoding and decoding, both through a provided SessionAgentMap to a starting SessionAgent server. Please look in the test case ThunkHelloWorldTest for building these maps and running a connection iwth data passing after encryption is established. There is a 4-way negotiation, from ProtocolOffered/Accepted to Go/GoToo. In using RSA 2048 signature validation and DH 2048 primes to establish the key used within the selected Cipher. The Cipher and Encoder are selected by name through the negotiation protocol. Currently three Ciphers are selectable, AESede, DESede, and DES. There are two encoders tested, asn1der, and Bytes. This protocol is described here, in this document. https://github.com/ZiroZimbarra/callistohouse/blob/master/docs/ParrotTalkFr… For as to use cases, this encrypted connection has no third party, man-in-the-middle situation by not using Certificates. As such, this is a tight implementation of NSA-proof encryption without explicit authorization beyond knowledge of a host:port. The use cases involve any communication desired to be encrypted with such high encryption. The support will last my lifetime, so we have a settled solution, here in the third version, provided here. It requires version 111 of Cryptography, as a prerequisite. Both run on Squeak and Pharo. http://www.squeaksource.com/Cryptography/Cryptography-zzz.111.mcz http://www.squeaksource.com/Cryptography/ParrotTalk-HenryHouse.3.mcz The current use is with my hubbub system, a promise-based distributed object implementation. I am working to bring ParrotTalk to Java and allow hubbub to operate interdependently between Squeak, Pharo, Java and any other languages which can support ParrotTalk and STON. My latest efforts with hubbub are to bring STON as the Layer 6 encoding. Hubbub depends on eLinda. http://www.squeaksource.com/Cryptography/elinda-HenryHouse.14.mcz http://www.squeaksource.com/Oceanside/hubbub-HenryHouse.38.mcz Hubbub currently fails to load correctly in Pharo. In Squeak the two ParrotRemoteTestCases: LookupTestCase and OperationalTestCase really screw everything up, do not save an image after running. I never run these tests until I get a better handle of serialization. Currently, do to a shift in progress to STON, the serialization tests fail, just the way we like it. Fix the tests then the system starts to work right. The shift away from vatId authorization should not adversely affect hubbub, we hope! When STON starts to work, and I think I need to turn off jsonMode, then traffic between vats can start to be analyzed and figure out how resolving is working with redirectors invoked remotely. - HH > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: [Pharo-dev] [ANNOUNCE] ParrotTalk release/design change considerations > Local Time: October 25, 2017 12:43 AM > UTC Time: October 25, 2017 4:43 AM > From: btc(a)openinworld.com > To: henry <henry(a)callistohouse.club>, Pharo Development List <pharo-dev(a)lists.pharo.org> > Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self(a)gmail.com> > > If I google... parrottalk protocol > nothing seems related. So what is ParrotTalk? > > P.S... since this is not "part of" pharo, [pharo-users] would be a better place for discussion than [pharo-dev]. > Could you re-announce there, with some description of use cases and who/where the protocol is used? > > cheers -ben > > On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 1:42 AM, henry <henry(a)callistohouse.club> wrote: > >> Please excuse all the low-level detail, if inappropriate to the discussion. The protocol changes are here specified. >> >> - HH >> >> On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 13:40, henry <henry(a)callistohouse.club> wrote: >> >>> In order to bring ParrotTalk-3.6 support, alongside historical 3.5 support, the frame header stays the same and the processing of the ProtocolOffered would select "ParrotTalk-3.6" to use the compact protocol of >>> >>> - ProtocolOffered { offered, preferred } >>> - ProtocolAccepted { accepted } >>> - IWant|GiveInfo|ReplyInfo { vatId, domain, publicKey, cryptoProtocols, dataEncoders } >>> - IAm|ReplyInfo { vatId, domain, publicKey, cryptoProtocol, dataEncoder, dhParam } >>> - Go { cryptoProtocol, dataEncoder, dhParam, signature } >>> - GoToo { signature } >>> >>> Using eLinda : >>> >>> http://www.squeaksource.com/Cryptography/elinda-HenryHouse.14.mcz >>> >>> Above the FrameBuffer, below the SessionOperations for each version of the protocol, an ELindaSession could be inserted. This session think would have the stacks for each protocol version SessionOperation registered by protocol in a Tuple, for eventual callback. When the ProtocolOffered comes in we publish the tuple frame, with set selected version, to route to the correct SessionOperation to support each version of the protocol. >>> >>> With a non-specific vatId required, anonymous connections would be supported. >>> >>> - HH >>> >>> On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 12:52, Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Hi henry thanks for this announce. Can you tell where such protocols are used? Stef On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 6:33 PM, henry wrote: > Hi all, > > I am happy to announce the release of version 3.5 of ParrotTalk, for Squeak > and Pharo, found here: > > http://www.squeaksource.com/Cryptography/ParrotTalk-zzz.2.mcz > > It follows this specification: > https://github.com/ZiroZimbarra/callistohouse/blob/master/docs/ParrotTalkFr… > > One item of note, in version 3.5, the system connecting to a server, sending > the IWant msg, must know the vatId of the system being connected to. I am > considering changing this to version 3.6 by removing one round-trip in > messaging. Therefore, these messages would be combined: IWant/GiveInfo, > IAm/ReplyInfo. I will keep ProtocolOffered and ProtocolAccepted to allow > eLindaSession to support both versions: 3.5 and 3.6. > > Thoughts please? > > - HH

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Re: [Pharo-users] "sourcetrail" a code browser for C++/Java
by rainer.winkler＠poaceae.de Nov. 3, 2017

Nov. 3, 2017

Hi Holger, thanks for mentioning the Software Exploration Tool Sourcetrail. I use it when I develop in C, it is now free for non commercial using. I already contactedÂ Eberhard GrÃ¤ther to discuss using Sourcetrail for other languages than C, C++ and Java. But this will probably at best take some time. So I am still using the Open Source Software Exploration Tool Moose2Model (www.moose2model.org) I developed. I use it for Smalltalk and SAP ABAP. It can be used in a similar way to Sourcetrail, but gives also the option to build commented and customized maps that can be stored and updated with new coding versions. Sourcetrail on the other hand gives much more details on the analyzed coding. I mentioned Sourcetrail in my talk at ESUG 2017 (https://www.slideshare.net/esug/do-visualizations-help-during-development-u… andÂ https://youtu.be/0ttLYM1tkek?list=PLJ5nSnWzQXi_THfKwhzxFwbXy00YTi0uv&t=1008 ) Cheers Rainer -----Original-Nachricht----- > Betreff: Pharo-users Digest, Vol 54, Issue 175 > Message: 5 > Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:11:26 +0800 > From: Holger Freyther <holger(a)freyther.de> > To: Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > Subject: [Pharo-users] "sourcetrail" a code browser for C++/Java > Message-ID: <30393F2B-BEC7-4FF4-AFDD-E467934D98B8(a)freyther.de> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Hi, > > I was just watching some videos and stumbled across sourcetrail[1][2]. The visualizations look pretty neat. Maybe it can be used an inspiration? > > cheers > > Â Â Â Â Â holger > > > [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8S6V6U5Vr4 > [2] https://www.sourcetrail.com

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New Pharo Booklet
by Stephane Ducasse Nov. 3, 2017

Nov. 3, 2017

Hi guys I just published a new little booklet on Pharo tips and tricks! Available at: http://books.pharo.org Feedback and contributions are welcome as usual. Stef

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Territorial loading problems & alternative ways of loading data for making a choropleth map
by Offray Vladimir Luna CÃ¡rdenas Nov. 3, 2017

Nov. 3, 2017

Hi, I would like a choropleth map of Colombian departments [1]. The first approach would be to use Territorial, but loading it is not working on Pharo 6.1 (used on Manjaro Linux): It doesn't appears in the Catalog, Gopher load gives me: "XMLFileException: File does does not exist: /home/offray/Programas/Pharo/6.1a/Dev24/territorial_files/fao/fao_country_names.xml" and loading Monticello bleeding edge gives me "FileDoesNotExist: File @ /home/offray/Programas/Pharo/6.1a/Dev24/territorial_files/opengeocode/wc-ASCII.csv". There is another way to make such choropleth map? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Departments_of_Colombia Thanks, Offray

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Re: [Pharo-users] Exchanging information between 2 pharo applications (2 images running on two different computers)
by Paulo R. Dellani Nov. 2, 2017

Nov. 2, 2017

Dear all, I would like to give ZeroMQ a try in Smalltalk, but am unable to load it on a new image successfully. In Pharo 5, I loaded the package ConfigurationOfZeroMQ from therepository in smalltalkhub <http://smalltalkhub.com/#%21/%7Epanuw/zeromq> and evaluated the following to load the code: ConfigurationOfZeroMQ loadBleedingEdge It seems to load everything well, but when I try to look at the source code of the methods that call the C routines from libzmq using the system browser, the system exhibits the following error message: UndefinedObject(Object)>>doesNotUnderstand: #keywords RBFFICallPragma(RBPragmaNode)>>selectorParts RubSHTextStylerST80(SHRBTextStyler)>>visitPragmaNode: RBFFICallPragma(RBPragmaNode)>>acceptVisitor: RubSHTextStylerST80(SHRBTextStyler)>>visitNode: [ :each | self visitNode: each ] in RubSHTextStylerST80>>visitMethodNode: in Block: [ :each | self visitNode: each ] OrderedCollection>>do: (its a long stack, cutting here) When loading ZeroMQ on Pharo 6, a window pops-up with the title 'Syntax Error: Literal constant expected' showing the source code of a method defining a call to a routine from a C library: apiDeleteDC: aHDC Â Â Â <apicall: Literal constant expected -> bool 'DeleteDC' (Win32HDC) module:'gdi32.dll'> Â Â Â ^self externalCallFailed If I update the syntax, re-writing the code above as apiDeleteDC: aHDC Â Â Â ^self ffiCall: #( bool DeleteDC (Win32HDC aHDC) ) module:'gdi32.dll' the compiler accepts it and the process can go on, but eventually the system will become unstable... Any ideas on how to solve this problems? Is this syntax still supported in Pharo5 & 6? Cheers, Paulo On 10/25/2017 03:47 PM, Sebastian Heidbrink via Pharo-users wrote: > ForwardedMessage.eml > > Subject: > Re: [Pharo-users] Exchanging information between 2 pharo applications > (2 images running on two different computers) > From: > Sebastian Heidbrink <sheidev(a)yahoo.de> > Date: > 10/25/2017 03:47 PM > > To: > pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org > > > Hi Cederik, > > you should have a look at http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~panuw/zeromq > ZeroMQ is a networking library. Nice thing about it is that all the > networking related workload is dealt with in a second process. That > can save you some resources within Smalltalk.

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What is code 137 / how to gracefully shut down via SIGTERM?
by Herby VojÄÃk Nov. 1, 2017

Nov. 1, 2017

Hi, I had to find out how to automatically deploy the backend written in Pharo, and so far it uses docker-compose stop to stop the instance (and later docker-compose up -d to get everything up again). I noticed the stop phase takes a while and ends with status code 137. I presume it ended forcefully and not gracefully. What is the idiomatic way to wait on SIGTERM and close the process gracefully? Thanks, Herby

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potentially useful diagrams
by Stephane Ducasse Nov. 1, 2017

Nov. 1, 2017

Hi during the last sprint we were brainstorming how we can help people to understand the git hub setup. I produced these two diagrams with christophe. Are they useful for you? Stef

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Pharo 6.1
by ÐÐ¸ÐºÐµÐ½ÑÐ¸Ð¹ ÐÐ¾ÑÐ°Ð¿Ð¾Ð² Oct. 31, 2017

Oct. 31, 2017

I've just downloaded Pharo 6.1 from pharo.org, unzipped it and started. And i've got an error: "UTF8InvalidText: Invalid utf8 input detected" Whether i save image or not, every time i start it i get the same error. System: win 7 professional x64 on 6-core Athlon Phenom. Locale: russian (cyrillic). Can i fix it by myself or i should forget about 6.1 until global bugfix? Vikenti Potapov

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Re: [Pharo-users] What is code 137 / how to gracefully shut down via SIGTERM?
by Bruce O'Neel Oct. 31, 2017

Oct. 31, 2017

Hi, Well, not so scary. Â That's the mac list. Â From a not so recent mac with Xcode 7 installed it looks like the below. The good news here is that the common signals have the same numbers. Â And how often do you get an SIGXCPU? cheers bruce #define SIGHUPÂ 1 Â Â Â /* hangup */ #define SIGINTÂ 2 Â Â Â /* interrupt */ #define SIGQUIT 3 Â Â Â /* quit */ #define SIGILLÂ 4 Â Â Â /* illegal instruction (not reset when caught) */ #define SIGTRAP 5 Â Â Â /* trace trap (not reset when caught) */ #define SIGABRT 6 Â Â Â /* abort() */ #define SIGPOLL 7 Â Â Â /* pollable event ([XSR] generated, not supported) */ #else Â /* (!_POSIX_C_SOURCE || _DARWIN_C_SOURCE) */ #define SIGIOTÂ SIGABRT /* compatibility */ #define SIGEMTÂ 7 Â Â Â /* EMT instruction */ #endifÂ /* (!_POSIX_C_SOURCE || _DARWIN_C_SOURCE) */ #define SIGFPEÂ 8 Â Â Â /* floating point exception */ #define SIGKILL 9 Â Â Â /* kill (cannot be caught or ignored) */ #define SIGBUSÂ 10Â Â Â /* bus error */ #define SIGSEGV 11Â Â Â /* segmentation violation */ #define SIGSYSÂ 12Â Â Â /* bad argument to system call */ #define SIGPIPE 13Â Â Â /* write on a pipe with no one to read it */ #define SIGALRM 14Â Â Â /* alarm clock */ #define SIGTERM 15Â Â Â /* software termination signal from kill */ #define SIGURGÂ 16Â Â Â /* urgent condition on IO channel */ #define SIGSTOP 17Â Â Â /* sendable stop signal not from tty */ #define SIGTSTP 18Â Â Â /* stop signal from tty */ #define SIGCONT 19Â Â Â /* continue a stopped process */ #define SIGCHLD 20Â Â Â /* to parent on child stop or exit */ #define SIGTTIN 21Â Â Â /* to readers pgrp upon background tty read */ #ifÂ (!defined(_POSIX_C_SOURCE) || defined(_DARWIN_C_SOURCE)) #define SIGIO Â 23Â Â Â /* input/output possible signal */ #endif #define SIGXCPU 24Â Â Â /* exceeded CPU time limit */ #define SIGXFSZ 25Â Â Â /* exceeded file size limit */ #define SIGVTALRM 26Â Â /* virtual time alarm */ #define SIGPROF 27Â Â Â /* profiling time alarm */ #ifÂ (!defined(_POSIX_C_SOURCE) || defined(_DARWIN_C_SOURCE)) #define SIGWINCH 28 Â Â /* window size changes */ #define SIGINFO 29Â Â Â /* information request */ #endif #define SIGUSR1 30Â Â Â /* user defined signal 1 */ #define SIGUSR2 31Â Â Â /* user defined signal 2 */ > Bruce O'Neel wrote: > > Hi, > > > > Posix requires that if the process is killed the return status is > > greater than 128. > > > > What is convention on linux systems is that if the process is sent a > > signal then the signal number is added to 128. Therefore 137 is SIGKILL > > (kill -9). SIGTERM is 143, SIGABRT is 134, SIGSEGV is 139, and so on. > > I've not seen an exception to this but there could be. > > > > Signals off of my closest linux system look like: > > > > #define SIGHUP 1 > > #define SIGINT 2 > > #define SIGQUIT 3 > > #define SIGILL 4 > > #define SIGTRAP 5 > > #define SIGABRT 6 > > #define SIGIOT 6 > > #define SIGBUS 7 > > #define SIGFPE 8 > > #define SIGKILL 9 > > #define SIGUSR1 10 > > #define SIGSEGV 11 > > #define SIGUSR2 12 > > #define SIGPIPE 13 > > #define SIGALRM 14 > > #define SIGTERM 15 > > Scary, because Esteban's sigtrapping package has them defined a bit > differently: > > { #category : #'class initialization' } > POSIXSignal class >> initialize [ > SIGHUP := 1. > SIGINT := 2. > SIGQUIT := 3. > SIGILL := 4. > SIGTRAP := 5. > SIGABRT := 6. > SIGPOLL := 7. > SIGIOT := SIGABRT. > SIGEMT := 7. > SIGFPE := 8. > SIGKILL := 9. > SIGBUS := 10. > SIGSEGV := 11. > SIGSYS := 12. > SIGPIPE := 13. > SIGALRM := 14. > SIGTERM := 15. > SIGURG := 16. > SIGSTOP := 17. > SIGTSTP := 18. > SIGCONT := 19. > SIGCHLD := 20. > SIGTTIN := 21. > SIGTTOU := 22. > SIGIO := 23. > SIGXCPU := 24. > SIGXFSZ := 25. > SIGVTALRM := 26. > SIGPROF := 27. > SIGWINCH := 28. > SIGINFO := 29. > SIGUSR1 := 30. > SIGUSR2 := 31. > ]

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Failure with ZdcPluginSSLSession on latest Pharo 32 bit/Win
by Raffaello Giulietti Oct. 31, 2017

Oct. 31, 2017

Hi Pharo 32 bit/Win users, I'm on the latest stock Pharo 32 bit/Win downloaded from http://files.pharo.org/platform/Pharo6.1-win.zip which contains the latest 60518 image. When evaluating Metacello new smalltalkhubUser: 'Moose' project: 'GToolkit'; configuration: 'GToolkit'; version: #development; load. I get an exception roughly stating: PrimitiveFailed: primitive #primitiveSSLCreate in ZdcPluginSSLSession failed I cross-checked the presence of all the .dlls in the Pharo6.1 folder, they are all there, including SqueakSSL and ssleay32. Anybody experiencing similar problems? Any idea on how to overcome it or on how to dive deeper? Greetings Raffaello

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Re: [Pharo-users] What is code 137 / how to gracefully shut down via SIGTERM?
by Bruce O'Neel Oct. 31, 2017

Oct. 31, 2017

Hi, Posix requires that if the process is killed the return status is greater than 128. What is convention on linux systems is that if the process is sent a signal then the signal number is added to 128. Â Therefore 137 is SIGKILL (kill -9). Â SIGTERM is 143, SIGABRT is 134, SIGSEGV is 139, and so on. Â I've not seen an exception to this but there could be. Signals off of my closest linux system look like: #define SIGHUP Â Â Â Â Â 1 #define SIGINT Â Â Â Â Â 2 #define SIGQUITÂ Â Â Â Â 3 #define SIGILL Â Â Â Â Â 4 #define SIGTRAPÂ Â Â Â Â 5 #define SIGABRTÂ Â Â Â Â 6 #define SIGIOT Â Â Â Â Â 6 #define SIGBUS Â Â Â Â Â 7 #define SIGFPE Â Â Â Â Â 8 #define SIGKILLÂ Â Â Â Â 9 #define SIGUSR1 Â Â Â Â 10 #define SIGSEGV Â Â Â Â 11 #define SIGUSR2 Â Â Â Â 12 #define SIGPIPE Â Â Â Â 13 #define SIGALRM Â Â Â Â 14 #define SIGTERM Â Â Â Â 15 SIGHUP is the phone hung up. Â SIGINT is interrupt (^C) SIGILL is you tried to execute an illegal instruction, SIGBUS is Bus error, normally you tried to read a 32 bit value on a non-32 bit boundary and uncommon on x86, SIGFPE is a floating point error, SIGKILL is too bad, you're dead, SIGSEGV is you tried to read/write memory that was not allowed, and SIGTERM is the normal "please exit" signal. cheers bruce > werner kassens wrote: > > Hi Herby, > > eventually you might want to look at > > https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/1063 > > but then i dont know anything about these things. > > Hopefully they have this solved already... but I learned 137 means > "killed". generally; did not know. :-) > > > werner > > Herby Hi,

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UK Smalltalk User Group Meeting - Monday, October 30th - PharoLambda: Smalltalk running serverless on AWS
by Tim Mackinnon Oct. 31, 2017

Oct. 31, 2017

The next meeting of the UK Smalltalk User Group Meeting will be on Monday, 30th October. We'll meet at The City Pride, London ( http://www.cityprideclerkenwell.co.uk/ <http://www.cityprideclerkenwell.co.uk/> ) at 7pm. Tim Mackinnon will show how recent Pharo advances with a small footprint 64bit image allow for Smalltalk to run happily on AWS Lambda and power things like an Alexa skill. While serverless architecture is interesting in its own right, the neat twist is using standard Smalltalk tooling to "~live" debug a failed execution and step through a post mortem stack. We will take a peak at the GitLab CI setup to deploy an Alexa application, look at how a simple lambda function can be hooked up and then discuss how we might leverage other Smalltalk strengths in a serverless world. If you'd like to join us, you can just show up at the pub. You can also sign up in advance at the meeting's Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/UKSTUG/events/244451089/ <https://www.meetup.com/UKSTUG/events/244451089/>. See you there!

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Return value of a FFI call to a external function is its 2`s complement
by Paulo R. Dellani Oct. 30, 2017

Oct. 30, 2017

Dear uFFI experts, I am dealing with the port of the ZeroMQ <http://smalltalkhub.com/#%21/%7Epanuw/zeromq> code to Pharo 6 and found something unexpected to me, at least: Zmq4Api>>apiZmqMsgRecv: message socket: socket withFlags: flags Â Â Â ^ self ffiCall: #(long zmq_msg_recv (ZmqApiMessage* message, ZmqApiSocket* socket, long flags ) ) Calling this returns the 2's complement of the return value of the external function call. Is it expected that the code calling this do the decoding of the 2'complement representation of the return value? Cheers, Paulo

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The start of this article is a problem for me. I hope this can be re-thought.
by PAUL DEBRUICKER Oct. 29, 2017

Oct. 29, 2017

https://medium.com/smalltalk-talk/a-gentle-introduction-to-amber-8c532631e9… Smalltalk is a programming language/environment etc. Physical attractiveness of people doesn't really affect anything we're doing here. And using it for marketing is offensive a significant number of people. I'm hopeful we can do better as a community.

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Re: [Pharo-users] [GT] moldable tools for non-developers
by Offray Vladimir Luna CÃ¡rdenas Oct. 29, 2017

Oct. 29, 2017

Hi Sebastian, On 27/10/17 13:15, Sebastian Heidbrink via Pharo-users wrote: > that is kind of what I am looking for. Would you mind if I contacted > you directly? > I am in the process of formulizing a master thesis and would love to > bring Pharo into the mix. > No problem. Contact me. This weekend is a little bit busy with some deadlines I need to reach, but next week is fine. > Is you phd thesis public? It is at [1], with a public repository of the research artifacts since 2011 (before open research was in fashion :-P), but it is in Spanish. Sorry. I didn't have the time to clarify my mind about this research and also improve my English. But I would be glad to discuss it in English with you or anyone interested. You're very welcomed. [1] http://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/doctorado-offray/ Cheers, Offray

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[ANN] OpenSSL wrapper
by Pierce Ng Oct. 29, 2017

Oct. 29, 2017

Hi all, I've put up the _beginnings_ of a wrapper for OpenSSL on STH: Metacello new baseline: 'OpenSSL'; smalltalkhubUser: 'PierceNg' project: 'OpenSSL-Pharo'; load. Verified on Pharo 6 32- and 64-bit. My near term goal is to wrap enough libcrypto functionality to implement the client-side of Let's Encrypt. I meant to put it up on GH, for the ease of forking and PRs, but I couldn't get Iceberg to work, and gitfiletree also failed to load, so STH it is. Â¯\_(ã)_/Â¯ Collaboration welcome. Pierce

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[ANN] Grafoscopio is now also an indexed publication
by Offray Vladimir Luna CÃ¡rdenas Oct. 28, 2017

Oct. 28, 2017

Hi, I would like to share with you the recent acceptation of Grafoscopio in the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS), which makes it also an indexed publication. More details at: http://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.00251 I would like to thank Serge StinchwichÂ (from this community) and Arfon Smith (from JOSS) for reviewing the software and helping me with the publication process. Cheers, Offray === About JOSS (http://joss.theoj.org/about) "The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is a *developer friendly* journal for research software packages. [...] The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is an academic journal (ISSN 2475-9066) with a formal peer review process that is designed to /improve the quality of the software submitted/. Upon acceptance into JOSS, a CrossRef DOI is minted and we list your paper on the JOSS website." ===

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[ANN] Iceberg 0.6.2 backported to Pharo 6.1
by Esteban Lorenzano Oct. 28, 2017

Oct. 28, 2017

Hi, I backported lastest Iceberg version to Pharo 6.1 to allow people to benefit for latest changes. This version has an important amount of tweak and fixes, but most important is the inclusion of tonel file format (this is default for Pharo 7.0, optional for Pharo 6.1) and introduces a file-per-class format. The advantages of this format has everything to do with the speed of access (is easier to reconstruct a package like) and the space on disk (methods are usually small but minimum space in disk is usually 4k so we waste a lot of space). Is also a better format for SSD disks. To backport Iceberg 0.6.2 I also needed to backport latest version of Metacello, so Pharo 6.1 and Pharo7+ users now also have the latest version of it available :) cheers! Esteban

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Linear solvers
by Ben Coman Oct. 28, 2017

Oct. 28, 2017

While reading around on Cassowary for constraint based UI, I noticed the original author and others expanded their work to a more general linear solver system Balsberg. Maybe something useful to many business, so just thought I'd drop some links... * Solving Interactive Logic Puzzles With Object-Constraints https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/publications/media/GraberFelgentr… * https://github.com/babelsberg/babelsberg-s * https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~borning/papers/felgentreff-babelsberg-sema… * https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/publications/media/FelgentreffLeh… btw, what does PolyMath/SciSmalltalk offer in the way of linear solvers? cheers -ben

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Read-only images / how to deploy new image as fast as possible?
by Herby VojÄÃk Oct. 28, 2017

Oct. 28, 2017

Hi, I came to the phase where I actually deploy the small backend written in Pharo, and I wonder about two things: 1. Is it possible to make .image / .changes read-only? Will Pharo just work (not writing the image, but that is not needed, all data are in sqlite file)? 2. How to "switch" images as fast as possible? I presume there is no way to tell vm to "stop doing this and reload different image" or something like that? I need to stop the runninng one and then start the new one? Or is it possible to "swap" the read-only image for new one and tell VM to reload (just wanting to minimize the off-time). Thanks, Herby

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