March 2020 - Pharo-users - lists.pharo.org

Pharo 8 stability and large images
by Jimmie Houchin March 9, 2020

March 9, 2020

I am in the midst of a very long term, in my spare time, project written in Pharo 7. I have at times been very frustrated with various problems. Images becoming unstable. Images crashing. Images crashing and unopenable after crashing. With seeming loss of code not yet committed. Images very unstable with memory greater than 500mb. The larger the worse. I regularly have images that exceed 1gb. It is without effort to grow images to such size. These images would increasingly become unstable, slow and unresponsive. They frequently would crash. I would have to reopen, save or commit my code and then open a new image and import my code. So I read threads speaking about large images with great interest. However, I persisted as I have a significant amount of code dedicated to this project. Currently approximately 120 classes. Some of which are private or proprietary. Over 70 public when I have cleaned up my mess and get ready to release. And many still to be written. As I persist, I also look around at my options. There are few things I would even consider for a rewrite. I this week decided to persist in my attempt to move to Pharo 8. I generally prefer to use the latest stable. However, the first use cause an error in saving an image which I did not understand and did not persist through. Currently I name my images for this project as such SmallTrader-0.00.image as a base image setup like I want. I open up such image and "Save As" and it automatically increments to the biggest number in the folder such as SmallTrader-0.59.image. Then I update with the latest code. However Pharo 8 generated an error (#+ was sent to nil) when doing "Save As"Â from an image named SmallTrader-8.000.image. So I decided to keep on with Pharo 7. However, this week I decided not to let that stop me and I simply renamed my image to something Pharo 8 did not complain about, SmallTrader-8-00.image and it now "Save As" renames to SmallTrader-8-00.1.image. Now, I am not writing this email to complain. But rather to praise. Once I got going on Pharo 8 this week with the latest stable VM and Image, it has seemed to be very stable and solid. I just ran a backtest and had naively did not pay attention to my backtest settings. The image ran the backtest perfectly, without problem. It was stable and consistently performant. After it completed I decided to look at the OS System Monitor to check how much memory it was consuming because it had opened up 252 inspect windows with a dictionary of several thousand objects each. It was effortlessly sitting at 5.7gb and was nicely responsive in the UI. I later nil'd the object in the Playground and did a Smalltalk garbageCollect, and it shrank down to 400mb. Nice! Wow. Great job guys. I am impressed. I am exceptionally pleased. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This makes me less afraid to use other time series data which run up my memory greatly. I would be reading in over 2gb of csv files to create my objects to operate upon. Previously it made the image incredibly unstable and unusable. I look forward to giving it a try. I just wanted to give you guys and gals (should there be any) a tremendous thank you and praise report. I am greatly encouraged to persist in my use of Pharo. And at the same time greatly encouraged to not look elsewhere because no need. Pharo is meeting my needs with reasonable performance and stability. I look forward to being productively active using Pharo 8 and look forward to the bright future Pharo 9 and beyond hold. Thanks again for this amazing language and environment. I hope someday to be able to repay the blessing I have received from all who have contributed to what I enjoy today. Jimmie Houchin

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[ANN] We have our winners!
by Richard Kenneth Eng March 8, 2020

March 8, 2020

https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/03/07/jrmpc-2020-award-winners/ Time to play this up for all the PR value I can muster. Richard

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How to recover from a VM crash
by Richard Kenneth Eng March 6, 2020

March 6, 2020

I have an emergency. One of my JRMPC teams says they can't open the image. They get a long error message that begins with: *Exception code: C0000005* *Exception addr: 000000000041FB6B* *Access violation (read access) at 0000000000000007* *RAX:0000000032700000 RBX:0000000000000000 RCX:0000000000000000 RDX:0000000000000000* *RSI:000000000322f4c0 RDI:000000000322f4f0 RBP:0000000006d04a90 RSP:0000000000b8f9b0* *R8 :0000000000000001 R9 :0000000031825990 R10:0000000000000000 R11:0000000000b8f8e0* *R12:0000000020d00000 R13:feffffffffffffff R14:00ffffffffffffff R15:0000000000000000* *RIP:000000000041fb6b EFL:00010246* *FP Control: 0000037f* *FP Status: 00000000* *FP Tag: 00000000* *Crashed in the VM thread* They didn't do a backup, so have they lost their code? Is there any way to recover? Thanks, Richard

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[ANN] COVID-19 analysis in Pharo
by HernÃ¡n Morales Durand March 6, 2020

March 6, 2020

Hello, I have set up a new Pharo project for the analysis of COVID-19 outbreak: https://github.com/hernanmd/COVID-2019 Thanks to the ObjectProfile for Roassal and PolyMath contributors for the DataFrame package. Cheers, HernÃ¡n

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VM download link damaged
by Davide Varvello March 6, 2020

March 6, 2020

Hi guys, If I download the mac vm from any browser (https://files.pharo.org/get-files/80/pharo64-mac-stable.zip) unzip and run Pharo.app, it says: "Pharo.app is damaged and canât be opened. You should move it to the Trash." It doesn't happen with curl script: curl -L https://get.pharo.org/64/ | bash Cheers Davide -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

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[ANN] Battlesnake vs JRMPC
by Richard Kenneth Eng March 5, 2020

March 5, 2020

Here's an interesting story comparing Battlesnake to JRMPC: https://smalltalk.tech.blog/2020/03/03/battlesnake-the-competition/ This could elevate awareness for JRMPC and Smalltalk. It has already garnered a good deal of praise. Richard

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Re: [Pharo-users] Quuve (financial app) movestto Public Domain under MIT License
by Paul DeBruicker March 4, 2020

March 4, 2020

Hi - Sorry your venture did not work out. I think it is generous to share your code with the world. I'm interested in seeing how you put it all together. Recognizing this is a Pharo list, I'm also interested in seeing your GemStone site and maintenance scripts. Hope you're able to find people to keep it going Paul Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list wrote > Quuve Moves to the Public Domain under MIT License > <https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT> > > Quuve provides a pro-grade integrated environment for portfolio management > and research for securities investors. Professional grade in that it was > meant to be licensed out to firms/groups offering research & portfolio > management services. It is a virtualized, scaleable, web application > developed with Pharo and deployed on GemStone/S. See the Quuve Overview > video on YouTube > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sraCv1VwJzQ&list=PLfTMPTPc22sGNrm2rXt8kD-9iFTgqbAUG> > for more information. > > Quuve development stopped in the Fall of 2017 due to a lack of funding, > however it still has some cutting-edge features for the industry. Because > Quuve can function as an institutional level data server, tailored mobile > apps could be built as standalone technology - and such an approach could > even take advantage of Quuveâs analyst/site model subscription selections. > > Software Positives: > > - > > Using a Glorp-like interface to access data: Quuve has successfully run > on Pharo (stand alone for development, backed by Fuel), Gemstone > (deployment), and with portions backed using a relational DB - not > required > nor used at present. Quuve provides DB admin tools including > import/export > of DBâs in part or full; deleted records access tables, and more. User > permission-masks can be granted by DB, table, even patterns in records. > - > > Generic CRUD tables UI allows for rapid class development/usage - see > ApplicationContext (stack with preferences style inheritance). > - > > 3-tier model (application, site, user) for data and Rules, allows site > (group) and user specific overrides, which is important in Finance, > where > few will agree on how to define âfree cash flowâ in one accounting > system, > or one industry, let alone globally. > - > > Processors allow for dynamic code-based answers to data requests; they > blur the lines between data and Rules. Any object can be wrapped with a > Processor and have data and rules added dynamically. Rules allow > data-requests to perform any operation a modern computer can perform, > and > most often these are simple math operations on series. Rules are > organized > by âanalystâ names (akin to rulesâ Classes), the specifications for > analysts is user specific, allowing for dynamic-inheritance required > for a > pro-grade multi-user Finance application pulling in international data > (using different source accounting standards). Rules are compiled on > demand; all caching is dynamic and user specific. Rules can be defined > using wild-card method-names to open up entire remote volumes of data, > or > data transformations, with a new pattern. Data series are very robust > around missing data and math errors. Quuve includes time profiling and > debugging method-trace system to understand data missing or debug > errors - > enabled in user-specific permissions. > - > > Demonstrated integration of learning systems for analysis and portfolio > management (ârobo-tradingâ). Data-sampling uses âpoint in time viewâ to > support accurate backtesting. Portfolios have the unique feature of > being > able to scroll backwards in time to any date to see the specific > holdings > there - as models are built from trade-event records. > - > > Access to millions of FREE data series from sites like FRED (St. Louis > Federal Reserve Bank - USA), World Bank, etc. - menu selectable in > report > writer! > - > > NPI (Non-public information) masking tools - important for privacy in > professional Finance office. > - > > Script Tool allows for ad hoc testing - most tools like the company > report tool also incorporates an ad hoc scripting area. > - > > User-specific configurable DB tables access, window access, etc. User > and DB bindings specified in CSV files for bootstrapping. > - > > Programmer documentation in wiki & in-system help-notes. Some âcompany > reportsâ are training tools. > > > Software Issues (âopportunitiesâ!): > > - > > Quuve development stopped in the Fall of 2017 due to a lack of funding; > some dialogs already look a bit out-dated. > > > - > > Some external libraries (e.g. javascript charting) require external > licenses - see Credits listed below. > - > > Professional grade data must be licensed for individual or larger group > - please consult us. Note: we can provide small amounts of CSV data for > testing company reports. Perhaps we can form a consortium to license > pro-grade data - but we need a Champion to lead the way. CSV data can > load > on-demand and depends only on the userâs data-source selection via > preference or dialog-input specification. Small amounts of data can be > sourced from certain sites on an individual basis but not commercially, > e.g. yahoo, google, etc. > - > > Data loaded currently into one default currency - defined in > data-loaders - the idea was to use âtable decoratorsâ model to map data > to > any currency at current exchange ratio or historical. > - > > Dropbox was used for file-sharing on cloud servers - not required for > local Pharo execution. > - > > Quuve configuration has not been updated in 18 months. > - > > In recent years only Apple platforms were used for Pharo development. > - > > Currently there is minimal support for Quuve. We can add users to our > existing programmer wiki and slack-threads to pick up where we left > off. In > adding users we would prefer a few dedicated champions. There are tools > that can be harvested for non-Finance applications. We can add a few > trusted users to our current demonstration server, but this contains > data > that cannot be shared, so we must be selective! > - > > Latest working image was Pharo 6.1 32 bits and GemStone 3.4.0 > - > > Latest instructions to load code are in our devwiki titled > DevelopmentBootstrapping_IAM - only a few dedicated users will be added > initially. > - > > Code is in smallhub and should become public, MIT, and possibly moved > to > Github. This is an immediate need! > - > > GemStone scripts to build new sites, maintenance etc are in gitlab - > again, we can start providing access selectively! > - > > We have only one server, running in Linode: > https://cloud.linode.com/linodes/866838/summary > > > > More info: > > Currently copyrighted to Debris Publishing, Inc. - This is changing to MIT > License. > > Quuve is intended to assist investors manage portfolios and perform > research. > > Quuve was built and deployed using tools from various sources. The > following firms, organizations, communities, and individuals have not > endorsed Quuve nor Debris, but we offer due credit whether they are aware > of us or not. Many thanks for/to... > > Development and deployment environments and platforms > > Pharo (c) Pharo.org <http://pharo.org/> Pharo is our development > platform, > language and environment. > > GemStone (c) GemTalk Systems <http://gemtalksystems.com/> We use > GemStone > system to deploy and run each Quuve site for production. In addition, > GemStone serves as our scalable object database. > Web frameworks > > Seaside Web Framework <http://seaside.st/> The web UI of Quuve is > built > using Seaside: a great web framework ideal for developing dynamic and > complex applications > > Twitter Bootstrap for Seaside > <http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~TorstenBergmann/Bootstrap> Bootstrap is > very > nicely integrated in Seaside web framework and we use it for styling and > designing Quuve web components. > > Highcharts for Seaside > <http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Mercap/HighchartsSt> > All our web charts use Highcharts JS bindings for Seaside > > Magritte <https://github.com/magritte-metamodel/magritte> Magritte > provides > us a nice and small meta-description framework which allow us to build a > fully featured CRUD system. Most of Quuve forms and reports are > automatically generated from our CRUD framework build on top of Magritte. > Development tools and frameworks > > Fuel Serializer <http://rmod.inria.fr/web/software/Fuel> We use Fuel > to > save and load our development and testing databases when working in Pharo > platform > > SIXX Serializer > <http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~umejava/smalltalk/sixx/index.html'> SIXX > is > used to move small databases from GemStone to Pharo or vice-versa or > between different GemStone instances > > Metacello > <https://github.com/dalehenrich/metacello-work/blob/master/docs/MetacelloUserGuide.md> > To manage software dependencies, releases, environment building, > deploying, > etc. we use Metacello > > Zinc and Zodiac HTTP Components <http://zn.stfx.eu/zn/index.html> > Both are > used as HTTP and HTTPS clients. In Addition, Zinc is used as the web > server > when using Seaside in Pharo > > Blowfish <http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/Cryptography/Cryptography/main> > We use > Blowfish as part of our encryption and decryption tools. > > XMLParser <http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/PharoExtras/XMLParser/main> We > also > need to parse and write XML in many places > Javascript Libraries > > JQuery and JQuery-UI <https://jquery.com/> Even if small, most of > our JS > development is using JQuery when possible. In addition, a couple of > components like autocompletion, popups, sortable lists, etc are used from > JQuery-UI > > TinyMCE <http://www.tinymce.com/> For nicely editing notes, > documents, etc. > we use the fully WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE > > Datatables <https://www.datatables.net/> To improve or HTML tables > and > reports we use Datatables. This allow us to have fixed header, fixed > columns and many many other features. > > CodeMirror <http://codemirror.net/> For scripting, editing > accounting and > computation rules, and many other places, we use CodeMirror to color > highlight code, autocomplete, etc. > Infrastructure > > CentOS Linux <https://www.centos.org/> All our guest/virtual > operating > systems are CentOS Linux, with latest stable release and security updates. > > Nginx <http://nginx.org/> Our web server for production purposes is > nginx. > > Monit <https://mmonit.com/monit/> We use monit to monitor all > processes, > being that Quuve ones or the ones we need from the Operating System. Monit > will, for example, automatically restart Quuve processes upon crashes. > > Fail2ban <http://www.fail2ban.org/> As part of our security efforts > we use > fail2ban to protect us from DOS attacks and from malicious user > > Firewalld <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FirewallD> We also use > firewalld > as out OS firewall -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

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Quuve (financial app) movestto Public Domain under MIT License
by Cameron Sanders March 4, 2020

March 4, 2020

Quuve Moves to the Public Domain under MIT License <https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT> Quuve provides a pro-grade integrated environment for portfolio management and research for securities investors. Professional grade in that it was meant to be licensed out to firms/groups offering research & portfolio management services. It is a virtualized, scaleable, web application developed with Pharo and deployed on GemStone/S. See the Quuve Overview video on YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sraCv1VwJzQ&list=PLfTMPTPc22sGNrm2rXt8kD-9i…> for more information. Quuve development stopped in the Fall of 2017 due to a lack of funding, however it still has some cutting-edge features for the industry. Because Quuve can function as an institutional level data server, tailored mobile apps could be built as standalone technology - and such an approach could even take advantage of Quuveâs analyst/site model subscription selections. Software Positives: - Using a Glorp-like interface to access data: Quuve has successfully run on Pharo (stand alone for development, backed by Fuel), Gemstone (deployment), and with portions backed using a relational DB - not required nor used at present. Quuve provides DB admin tools including import/export of DBâs in part or full; deleted records access tables, and more. User permission-masks can be granted by DB, table, even patterns in records. - Generic CRUD tables UI allows for rapid class development/usage - see ApplicationContext (stack with preferences style inheritance). - 3-tier model (application, site, user) for data and Rules, allows site (group) and user specific overrides, which is important in Finance, where few will agree on how to define âfree cash flowâ in one accounting system, or one industry, let alone globally. - Processors allow for dynamic code-based answers to data requests; they blur the lines between data and Rules. Any object can be wrapped with a Processor and have data and rules added dynamically. Rules allow data-requests to perform any operation a modern computer can perform, and most often these are simple math operations on series. Rules are organized by âanalystâ names (akin to rulesâ Classes), the specifications for analysts is user specific, allowing for dynamic-inheritance required for a pro-grade multi-user Finance application pulling in international data (using different source accounting standards). Rules are compiled on demand; all caching is dynamic and user specific. Rules can be defined using wild-card method-names to open up entire remote volumes of data, or data transformations, with a new pattern. Data series are very robust around missing data and math errors. Quuve includes time profiling and debugging method-trace system to understand data missing or debug errors - enabled in user-specific permissions. - Demonstrated integration of learning systems for analysis and portfolio management (ârobo-tradingâ). Data-sampling uses âpoint in time viewâ to support accurate backtesting. Portfolios have the unique feature of being able to scroll backwards in time to any date to see the specific holdings there - as models are built from trade-event records. - Access to millions of FREE data series from sites like FRED (St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank - USA), World Bank, etc. - menu selectable in report writer! - NPI (Non-public information) masking tools - important for privacy in professional Finance office. - Script Tool allows for ad hoc testing - most tools like the company report tool also incorporates an ad hoc scripting area. - User-specific configurable DB tables access, window access, etc. User and DB bindings specified in CSV files for bootstrapping. - Programmer documentation in wiki & in-system help-notes. Some âcompany reportsâ are training tools. Software Issues (âopportunitiesâ!): - Quuve development stopped in the Fall of 2017 due to a lack of funding; some dialogs already look a bit out-dated. - Some external libraries (e.g. javascript charting) require external licenses - see Credits listed below. - Professional grade data must be licensed for individual or larger group - please consult us. Note: we can provide small amounts of CSV data for testing company reports. Perhaps we can form a consortium to license pro-grade data - but we need a Champion to lead the way. CSV data can load on-demand and depends only on the userâs data-source selection via preference or dialog-input specification. Small amounts of data can be sourced from certain sites on an individual basis but not commercially, e.g. yahoo, google, etc. - Data loaded currently into one default currency - defined in data-loaders - the idea was to use âtable decoratorsâ model to map data to any currency at current exchange ratio or historical. - Dropbox was used for file-sharing on cloud servers - not required for local Pharo execution. - Quuve configuration has not been updated in 18 months. - In recent years only Apple platforms were used for Pharo development. - Currently there is minimal support for Quuve. We can add users to our existing programmer wiki and slack-threads to pick up where we left off. In adding users we would prefer a few dedicated champions. There are tools that can be harvested for non-Finance applications. We can add a few trusted users to our current demonstration server, but this contains data that cannot be shared, so we must be selective! - Latest working image was Pharo 6.1 32 bits and GemStone 3.4.0 - Latest instructions to load code are in our devwiki titled DevelopmentBootstrapping_IAM - only a few dedicated users will be added initially. - Code is in smallhub and should become public, MIT, and possibly moved to Github. This is an immediate need! - GemStone scripts to build new sites, maintenance etc are in gitlab - again, we can start providing access selectively! - We have only one server, running in Linode: https://cloud.linode.com/linodes/866838/summary More info: Currently copyrighted to Debris Publishing, Inc. - This is changing to MIT License. Quuve is intended to assist investors manage portfolios and perform research. Quuve was built and deployed using tools from various sources. The following firms, organizations, communities, and individuals have not endorsed Quuve nor Debris, but we offer due credit whether they are aware of us or not. Many thanks for/to... Development and deployment environments and platforms Pharo (c) Pharo.org <http://pharo.org/> Pharo is our development platform, language and environment. GemStone (c) GemTalk Systems <http://gemtalksystems.com/> We use GemStone system to deploy and run each Quuve site for production. In addition, GemStone serves as our scalable object database. Web frameworks Seaside Web Framework <http://seaside.st/> The web UI of Quuve is built using Seaside: a great web framework ideal for developing dynamic and complex applications Twitter Bootstrap for Seaside <http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~TorstenBergmann/Bootstrap> Bootstrap is very nicely integrated in Seaside web framework and we use it for styling and designing Quuve web components. Highcharts for Seaside <http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Mercap/HighchartsSt> All our web charts use Highcharts JS bindings for Seaside Magritte <https://github.com/magritte-metamodel/magritte> Magritte provides us a nice and small meta-description framework which allow us to build a fully featured CRUD system. Most of Quuve forms and reports are automatically generated from our CRUD framework build on top of Magritte. Development tools and frameworks Fuel Serializer <http://rmod.inria.fr/web/software/Fuel> We use Fuel to save and load our development and testing databases when working in Pharo platform SIXX Serializer <http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~umejava/smalltalk/sixx/index.html'> SIXX is used to move small databases from GemStone to Pharo or vice-versa or between different GemStone instances Metacello <https://github.com/dalehenrich/metacello-work/blob/master/docs/MetacelloUse…> To manage software dependencies, releases, environment building, deploying, etc. we use Metacello Zinc and Zodiac HTTP Components <http://zn.stfx.eu/zn/index.html> Both are used as HTTP and HTTPS clients. In Addition, Zinc is used as the web server when using Seaside in Pharo Blowfish <http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/Cryptography/Cryptography/main> We use Blowfish as part of our encryption and decryption tools. XMLParser <http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/PharoExtras/XMLParser/main> We also need to parse and write XML in many places Javascript Libraries JQuery and JQuery-UI <https://jquery.com/> Even if small, most of our JS development is using JQuery when possible. In addition, a couple of components like autocompletion, popups, sortable lists, etc are used from JQuery-UI TinyMCE <http://www.tinymce.com/> For nicely editing notes, documents, etc. we use the fully WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE Datatables <https://www.datatables.net/> To improve or HTML tables and reports we use Datatables. This allow us to have fixed header, fixed columns and many many other features. CodeMirror <http://codemirror.net/> For scripting, editing accounting and computation rules, and many other places, we use CodeMirror to color highlight code, autocomplete, etc. Infrastructure CentOS Linux <https://www.centos.org/> All our guest/virtual operating systems are CentOS Linux, with latest stable release and security updates. Nginx <http://nginx.org/> Our web server for production purposes is nginx. Monit <https://mmonit.com/monit/> We use monit to monitor all processes, being that Quuve ones or the ones we need from the Operating System. Monit will, for example, automatically restart Quuve processes upon crashes. Fail2ban <http://www.fail2ban.org/> As part of our security efforts we use fail2ban to protect us from DOS attacks and from malicious user Firewalld <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FirewallD> We also use firewalld as out OS firewall

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Spec2 demos
by Steve Quezadas March 4, 2020

March 4, 2020

Hey guys, Forgive the naive question, but does anyone know how to open the demos in Spec2? The package "Spec2-Examples" has a few example objects that I would like to toy with: SpDemo SpDemoButtonsPresenter SpCheckBoxExample "SpDemo openInWorld" is not working.

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New VM promoted to Stable for Pharo 8
by tesonep＠gmail.com March 3, 2020

March 3, 2020

Hi, a new VM has been promoted for Pharo 8. This VM has been used in Pharo 9 during the last 4 weeks without incidents and as the latest one for Pharo 8 during the same period of time. Basically this VM solves the following main issues: - GC memory corruption during saving the image - LibSSH error in Windows. And a couple of small issues. The VM is downloaded directly when using zero conf (http://get.pharo.org) And in new installations of the Pharo Launcher. To update it in older installations you should open the VM manager: [image: lala.png] And then using the update button: [image: lala2.png] The new VM should be from 2020-02-20. Depending of the Pharo Launcher version, maybe the table is not auto-updated :P To check the correct version, close the VM manager window and open it again. Cheers, Pablo -- Pablo Tesone. tesonep(a)gmail.com

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