September 2018 - Pharo-users

Unable to install Grafoscopio on Windows (libgit2 issues?)
by Offray Vladimir Luna CÃ¡rdenas Sept. 25, 2018

Sept. 25, 2018

Hi, I'm making a workshop in Visualizar2018, a data visualization event in Madrid, that dedicates this edition to personal data (in my case, the twitter data selfies), but I'm having problems trying to install Grafoscopio on Windos (Mac and Linux work), which gives a not good first impression for participants. In Linux the problem was solved by installing libcurl-gnutils and in Mac this problem doesn't present at all. We tried to install curl and libcurl.dll on Windows and still we are getting the same error message (just says that is unable to install it and nothing else). It happens while trying to install Roassal and seems related with libgit2. How can we install libgit2, so software packages that needs them (seems Roassal2 does) can be installed properly on Windows? Thanks, Offray

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[ANN] Pharo Consortium upgrade to Platinum: ZWEIDENKER
by Marcus Denker Sept. 25, 2018

Sept. 25, 2018

The Pharo Consortium is very happy to announce that ZWEIDENKER has ugraded to be a Platinum member. About - ZWEIDENKER: http://zweidenker.de - Pharo Consortium: http://consortium.pharo.org The goal of the Pharo Consortium is to allow companies and institutions to support the ongoing development and future of Pharo. Individuals can support Pharo via the Pharo Association: - http://association.pharo.org

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[ANN] Pharo Consortium New Bronze Member: Spesenfuchs
by Marcus Denker Sept. 25, 2018

Sept. 25, 2018

The Pharo Consortium is very happy to announce that Spesenfuchs has joined the Consortium as a Bronze Member. About - Spesenfuchs: http://spesenfuchs.de - Pharo Consortium: http://consortium.pharo.org The goal of the Pharo Consortium is to allow companies and institutions to support the ongoing development and future of Pharo. Individuals can support Pharo via the Pharo Association: - http://association.pharo.org

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TextEditor
by Hilaire Sept. 24, 2018

Sept. 24, 2018

Hello, How can I get a text editor window? I can't make sense of the TextEditor class, and its comment is not helpful. What is the logic behind? Thanks Hilaire -- Dr. Geo http://drgeo.eu

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[ANN] Next Pharo Sprint: Sept 28
by Marcus Denker Sept. 24, 2018

Sept. 24, 2018

We will organize a Pharo sprint / Moose dojo Sept 28, starting at 10:00am. (Local Time Paris). Goals of this sprint: â¢ Pharo 7 issues Remote Sprint: Remotely, you can join us on Discord. During the sprint, we synchronize local and remote Pharo sprinters: http://pharo.org/contribute-events Known Local Sprint meetings Lille/France: It will be at the Inria Lille, Building B, third floor (RMoD offices). As the building is not open to the public, please contact us before if you plan to come https://association.pharo.org/event-2973620

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A mentoring course ComplexCondition implementation
by Vitor Medina Cruz Sept. 24, 2018

Sept. 24, 2018

Hello, In A Mentoring Course in Smalltalk, Andr es Valloud explains a really good implementation of and API to deal with complex conditions, is there any implementation of this (or similar) on Pharo? Regards, Vitor

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MIDI IO
by Manuel Leuenberger Sept. 24, 2018

Sept. 24, 2018

Hi, I am currently investigating how to work with audio in Pharo, especially how to hook up Pharo to my synths or DAW using MIDI. I found that there is an old MIDI plugin for the VM, but apparently it has been discontinued due to OS changes (http://forum.world.st/Mac-OS-Cocoa-MIDI-Plugin-td4893691.html <http://forum.world.st/Mac-OS-Cocoa-MIDI-Plugin-td4893691.html>). Is there any setup that works for MIDI IO on OSX using Pharo 6/6.1? Cheers, Manuel

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Pharo and fileout folder
by Pablo Frias Sept. 22, 2018

Sept. 22, 2018

Hi everyone, I noted that Pharo resets the location of output when doing fileout to the default Pharo folder, even after several times I changed it to another folder. Is that an expected behaviour? Thanks, Pablo

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What are the biggest myths about Smalltalk?
by horrido Sept. 21, 2018

Sept. 21, 2018

I published What are the biggest myths about Smalltalk? <https://hackernoon.com/what-are-the-biggest-myths-about-smalltalk-832a1c29f…> earlier this week. FYI, this person gave an account of his experience with Pharo <https://medium.com/@norman_kraft/i-guess-im-also-one-of-the-1-10-who-didn-t…> . Here it is, verbatim: I guess Iâm also one of the 1/10 who didnât like or âgetâ Smalltalk. I read through the same books Mortimer did, and spent a good six months trying to get even small projects in Smalltalk (Pharo) off the ground, and tried to get several of my developer friends to try out Smalltalk with me. I (and they) found little more than frustration as the reward. Packages and package management is a problem that canât simply be dismissed. Monticello is not a good package system, half the time it failed when I tried to install libraries. And the failures gave error messages that were less helpful than a Java stackdump. The IDE is a bit mysterious. I know you find it simple to work with, but many donât. There is a lot of clicking and window hopping, and I often found myself in the wrong window for what I wanted to do. There is simply too many windows in a small space and no clear tools to navigate the IDE as efficiently as other IDEs. Of course, I may be biased here: I do almost all my development in Emacs, but my friends were using IDEs like VisualStudio and NetBeans in their work and they also found the Pharo IDE clunky. Deployment is another serious issue. Deploying a Smalltalk image means installing the full image on a server and getting rights to run it. This reminds me of Common Lisp, which is a wonderful and much-loved language but is a pain to deploy in todayâs security-conscious server world. Performance was another issue. My friends and I put together a web application in Seaside with Roassal, which was kind of fun to start but a pain to finish. We wrote another one in Java to do the same task, with the D3 JS library for data visualization. The Java web application was several times faster than the Pharo app in rendering visualizations and processing data throughput. When one of the applications crashed, the difference in error and crash handling between Java and Smalltalk was vast. Smalltalk is fun to play with, but I canât think of a single secured production environment where I would use it. Maybe one day it will grow up to have bullet-proof libraries, a professional IDE and better performance but for now, itâs just a hobby language for me. -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

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Deprecation guide for methods, classes and packages
by Torsten Bergmann Sept. 21, 2018

Sept. 21, 2018

Hi, >From Bug #20900/ PR 1818 it looked like it is not really clear on how to "deprecate" correctly. Therefore I summarized and wrote a short guide following what we contributors used as best practice so far. Also read [1], [2] and [3] and check some of the deprecation settings in the Pharo settings browser. Just open SettingsBrowser and search for "Depre". I write this mail to "pharo-dev" with CC: "pharo-users" list - because of common interest. But comments and replies should please go to "pharo-dev" so we do not disrupt the thread too much. Thanks! Please review what I wrote and ideally we can put the text or a link to it as "Deprecation guide" into the documentation / wiki / ... on GitHub afterwards. Hope this helps a little bit. Thanks T. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation [2] https://www.peteruhnak.com/blog/2015/08/06/transforming-deprecated-code-wit… [3] https://pharoweekly.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/automatic-deprecation-refactor… ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In any Pharo version we have a special package hosting deprecated methods and classes. This allows smooth migration for Pharo users as code should still load and runs to some extent - but deprecation warnings and possibly a helping hand (in form of automatic code transformations) could be given to support migration. As we currently work on Pharo7 there is a "Deprecated70" package in the image hosting deprecated methods and classes intended to be removed for Pharo 8. When Pharo 7 is released the users can easily spot the deprecations - also because they are striked through (more on this below). When Pharo 8 iteration starts the "Deprecated70" will be replaced with an empty "Deprecated80" package. DEPRECATING METHODS =================== If you deprecate a METHOD use #deprecated: message and switch it to be an extension method in *Deprecated70*. If the method could be replaced by calling another method then dispatch the call to the new method and ideally provide a transformation so next time the old method is called the sender method is automagically rewritten and could be adopted/migrated: oldMethod "An old method we do not use anymore. But luckily there is a replacement." self deprecated: 'Please use #newMethod instead' transformWith: '`@receiver oldMethod' -> '`@receiver newMethod'. ^ self newMethod So if there is a method like foo self oldMethod sending the old deprecated method it will be migrated to foo self newMethod as soon as foo, the oldMethod and the transformation is called. If the automatically migrated method is under version control (Monticello or git) you will easily see that #foo was modified. In case there is no replacement for a method you would like to deprecate then it is best to throw an error when it is used: veryOldMethod "A very old method hopefully nobody uses. So we do no provide a replacement." self deprecated: 'The method #veryOldMethod is deprecated without any replacement'. ^ self error: 'Do not use #veryOldMethod anymore' Note that the method is striked through in the Pharo system browser in both cases to show that it should not be used anymore. In the standard image calling a deprecated method is logged on the Transcript and flagged with a warning dialog. This should help users and maintainers of external packages to easily spot when they still use deprecated code. You can change these settings in Pharo Settings Browser under Tools -> Debugging -> Deprecation Handling. DEPRECATING CLASSES =================== If you deprecate a CLASS implement #isDeprecated on class side to return true and move it to package "Deprecated70" Ideally write in the class comment why it is deprecated and if there is a replacement class what to use instead Object subclass: #OldClass instanceVariableNames: '' classVariableNames: '' package: 'Deprecated70-OldTag' and comment to explain the reasons: OldClass comment: 'Use NewClass instead'. and implement in class side method category 'testing' isDeprecated "We do not need this class anymore" ^true Note that the class is striked through in the system browser. DEPRECATING PACKAGES ==================== If you deprecate a PACKAGE then rename it with "Deprecated" in the name. Let the class side of the package manifest (typically a subclass of PackageManifest within the package) als return #isDeprecated with true. In the class comment of the package manifest (which also serves as package comment) explain why the package is deprecated and if there is a replacement or not. Example: your package name is "OldPackage-Core", so the new name is "OldPackage-Deprecated-Core". Create a manifest or use the existing one. A Manifest should be a subclass of PackageManifest and should be categorized within a 'Manifest' tag. PackageManifest subclass: #ManifestOldPackageCore instanceVariableNames: '' classVariableNames: '' package: 'OldPackage-Deprecated-Core-Manifest' and comment to explain the reasons: ManifestOldPackageCore comment: 'This package is not useful anymore. Check NewPackage for replacement'. and implement in class side method category 'testing' isDeprecated "We do not need this package anymore" ^true Note that the manifest class and the package is striked through in the system browser. Be aware that a deprecated package might be removed completely already in the next Pharo major version iteration.

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