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Re: [Pharo-users] [Ann] Blog entry about using Pharo / Smalltalk to build a bot

by Dimitris Chloupis

there was one claim you made in that post that got me thinking ""No one else knows Smalltalk." So I wonder how many developers amount to "no one". Now my data is questionable to say the least but I dont think I am very far from the truth. According to a quick estimate I found online there are 18.500.000 developers , around half of that are pros Now Tiobe Index has some numbers about language popularity, widely disputed but I will use that. Unfortunately Smalltalk does not even make top 50 but I think its close to that because it used to be in the top 50 of Tiobe Index once .... so .... 50th is around 0,4% which means that smalltalk is probably at least 0.1% Now if we multiply with the total amount of developers No | Name of Language | Percentage of Popularity | Amount of total develpers --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Java 13% = 2.405.000 2) C 6,5% = 1.202.500 3) C++ 5,5% = 1.017.500 4) C# 4,2% = 777.000 5) Python 3,7% = 684.500 6) VB .NET 2,6% 7) PHP 2,3% 8) Javascript 2,1% 9) Pearl 2% 10) Ruby 2% 11) Swift 1,8% 12) Delphi 1,8% 13) Visual Basic 1,8% 14) Assembly 1,8% 15) R 1,8% 16) Go 1,7% 17) Matlab 1,6% 18) Objective C 1,5% 19) Scratch 1,5 % 20) Dart 1,3% 26) Cobol 1% = 185.000 28) Scala 0,9% 31) Erlang 0,7% 34) Lisp 0,7% 35) Fortan 0,7% 36) Lua 0,7% 47) Haskell 0,5% 120) Smalltalk 0,1% = 18.500 I made up the position of smalltalk and its percentage but if you see how percentages are from language to language you will have to agree that I cannot be very far. So the bad news is the sources are questionable to say the least the good news is however that we are close to the truth because the Python devs have also reported 1 million users. Now if this is so close to the truth that means two massively important things. I also know for a fact that on its popular days Delphi used to also have 1 million devs so its percentage is close to reality as well. The general picture is that the math at least seems to hold up. So what is the conclusion out of this ? 1) The vast majority of the popular languages , apart from Java, are not anywhere near as popular as they imply. Especially Javascript with only 300k developer , by the noise they generate you would believe they are like 300 million. Once you leave the top 5 , pretty much every language is very close. 2) 18.500 is nowhere near close to "no one" its actually closer to a small town or a very large village. So definitely a significant amount of Smalltalk devs. 3) Coders use pretty much every language out there and they do not concentrate on few popular ones On the other hand there are all sort of numbers online , one source gives Java over 6 million devs. But I do not think that the exact matter matters rather the general picture. I have found the whole thing mind blowing to say the least and it completely reduces the meaning of "language popularity" showing that judging the popularity of the language by the noise it generates on the net is definitely a terrible metric. I am willing to bet that Pharo has around 3-6.000 users which is definitely not bad. Thank you for opening my eyes, I will from now on fight the illusion of language popularity. Oh yes I loved your post, very well written, excellent work On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 9:24 PM sergio ruiz <sergio.rrd(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hey, all.. > > I just released a blog entry entitled: > > "Why I chose Pharo Smalltalk to build my Bot project" > > which can be viewed here: > > > http://www.codeandmusic.com/why-i-chose-pharo-smalltalk-to-build-my-bot/?ut… > > I would appreciate (and probably create new posts about) any input.. > > Thanks! > > > ---- > peace, > sergio > photographer, journalist, visionary > > Public Key: http://bit.ly/29z9fG0 > #BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV > http://www.Village-Buzz.com <http://www.village-buzz.com/> > http://www.ThoseOptimizeGuys.com <http://www.thoseoptimizeguys.com/> > http://www.coffee-black.com > http://www.painlessfrugality.com > http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101 > http://www.facebook.com/sergio101 >

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] PharoLambda 1.5 - Pharo running on AWS Lambda now with saved Debug sessions via S3

by Tim Mackinnon

Actually it looks like that extra 1.5mb is not worth having as It seems that something does end up using the class organisation and so it must recompute when the image is launched. Tim > On 17 Aug 2017, at 13:07, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works> wrote: > > Just thought I would report back a bit more on this - > > The Unicode change doesnât work in my case (possibly not for command line Pharo as well) as I get an error where OS filenameâs need unicode support (actually I think this is where its trying to write to stdout, but I didnât dig more into this): > > Error: Instances of UndefinedObject are not indexable > UndefinedObject(Object)>>error: > UndefinedObject(Object)>>errorNotIndexable > UndefinedObject(Object)>>size > Unicode class>>isLetter: > Character>>isLetter > Path class>>isAbsoluteWindowsPath: > Path class>>from:delimiter: > MacStore(FileSystemStore)>>pathFromString: > FileSystem>>pathFromString: > ByteString(String)>>asPathWith: > FileSystem>>pathFromObject: > FileSystem>>referenceTo: > ByteString(String)>>asFileReference > FileStream class>>fullName: > FileStream class>>fileNamed: > SmalltalkImage>>openLog > > I was able to improve on Guilleâs warning about how to safely clear up monticello/metacello (and not use become: String new) with the following (I actually think Metacello should provide a #cleanUp method, so I raised a pr for consideration) > logger cr; nextPutAll: '>Removing Clearing MC Registry'. > MetacelloProjectRegistration resetRegistry. > > Iâm then able to be by image down from 22mb to 13.8 (which is pretty good). > > As a further experiment I also noticed that there is a fair amount of space trapped in Protocols and ClassOrganisation - so I tried clearing those out (as they are lazily cached) with: > Smalltalk allClassesAndTraits do: [:c | c basicOrganization: nil ]. > This seems to give me a further 1mb back (but I haveât tried performance tests on this, but my naive assumption is that in a running system that isnât adding/manipulating code - that I donât think Protocols are used?). So Iâm now at 21mb. > > Tim > >> On 16 Aug 2017, at 10:53, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >> Hi, tracing through your changes - it looks like: >> >> Smalltalk cleanUp: true except: #() confirming: false. >> Takes care of all the non-unicode changes you proposed (and it seems like its a known cleanup protocol). >> >> I based my script on #cleanupForRelease ^^. But I did not just blindly execute it as is because I wanted to understand the implications of each line. >> >> I wonder if the Unicode change is worth it/risky as many web based services I might connect to with Zinc do support Unicode so maybe I should keep that one in. (I will for now - might verify how much of a difference it really makes) >> >> No, it should not break any encoding/decoding. The changes I proposed will just nil out two things: >> >> - the uppercase/lowercase mapping unicode tables that says for each codepoint if the codepoint is uppercase/lowercase and allows transformations from/to uppercase/lowercase. This means that these may not work as expected: >> >> aChar asLowercase >> aChar asUppercase >> aChar toLowercase >> aChar toUppercase >> >> - the unicode classification table that says if a character is letter or digit, and so on. This means that these may not work as expected: >> >> aChar isLetter >> aChar isDigit >> aChar isAlphaNumeric >> >> I think my next port of call is cleanUp for Monticello/Metacello as I see a fair amount of that stuff floating around in my image (after Iâve used it to bootstrap my code). >> >> Tim >> >>> On 16 Aug 2017, at 02:32, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> Actually it happens first that monticello is "nicely" coupled with the changeset system and logs all the source code loaded in change sets :D :/ Â¬Â¬. Also, the first two strings in terms of size are related to unicode tables (we should put them in files instead of in the image and load them on demand), and the two biggest arrays also to unicode. I just tried the following in a clean bootstrapped "minimal" image (metacello): >>> >>> "Careful, this will make that #isLetter, #isUppercase #isLowercase, #toLowercase and #toUppercase only work on ascii" >>> Character characterSet: nil. >>> Unicode classPool at: #GeneralCategory put: nil. >>> Unicode classPool at: #DecimalProperty put: nil. >>> >>> UnicodeDefinition removeFromSystem. >>> ChangeSet removeChangeSetsNamedSuchThat: [ :each | true ]. >>> ChangeSet resetCurrentToNewUnnamedChangeSet. >>> MCDefinition clearInstances. >>> Undeclared removeUnreferencedKeys. >>> Smalltalk garbageCollect. >>> >>> like this: >>> >>> ./vm/pharo Pharo7.0-metacello-32bit-fa236b7.image eval --save "Character characterSet: nil. Unicode classPool at: #GeneralCategory put: nil. Unicode classPool at: #DecimalProperty put: nil. UnicodeDefinitions removeFromSystem. ChangeSet removeChangeSetsNamedSuchThat: [ :each | true ]. ChangeSet resetCurrentToNewUnnamedChangeSet. MCDefinition clearInstances. Undeclared removeUnreferencedKeys. Smalltalk garbageCollect." >>> >>> and my image went down from 11MB to 6.6MB (7.0 MB if I don't change back to ascii with the first three lines) >>> >>> Then I tried a tally: >>> >>> ./vm/pharo Pharo7.0-metacello-32bit-fa236b7.image save spacetally >>> >>> ./vm/pharo spacetally.image eval --save "repo := MCFileTreeRepository new directory: '../src' asFileReference. version := repo loadVersionFromFileNamed: 'Tool-Profilers.package'. version load." >>> >>> re-clean since i loaded some packages >>> >>> ./vm/pharo spacetally.image eval --save "ChangeSet removeChangeSetsNamedSuchThat: [ :each | true ]. ChangeSet resetCurrentToNewUnnamedChangeSet. MCDefinition clearInstances. Undeclared removeUnreferencedKeys. Smalltalk garbageCollect." >>> >>> This image is now 6.6MB (7.1MB with the unicode large arrays), 4.1% of strings (274k) what seems reasonable. Remaining big strings are Pharo's licence, the buffer of the changes file and then some class comments (shouldn't they be fetched from disk as any other method source code?). >>> >>> Making again a tally shows that ~30% of the space is taken by Arrays and 21.9% by compiled methods. But, BUT! :) I have ~30k arrays and lots of collections also: >>> >>> "MethodDictionary" 2872 + >>> "IdentitySet" 12781 + >>> "OrderedCollection" 4398 + >>> "Set" 2959 + >>> "Dictionary" 1997 + >>> "IdentityDictionary" 454 >>> ----------------------------------------------- >>> 25461 >>> >>> So there are ~5k arrays that are used outside collections. >>> >>> Worth exploring a bit more I think. >>> >>> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 1:23 AM, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 11:26 PM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >>> Hi Guille/Ben - I got a quick moment to try the SpaceTally (aside: it seems very convoluted to load a single package into the image, I was trying to avoid having to create a baselineOf for something so simple - I ended up with: >>> >>> I know, I also believe we have to simplify this. In any case, baselines are healthy as they allow to also express dependencies. Otherwise you'll end up loading dependencies by hand. We'll fix this soon I hope. >>> >>> >>> repo := MCFileTreeRepository new directory: './bootstrap' asFileReference. >>> version := repo loadVersionFromFileNamed: 'Tool-Profilers.package'. >>> version load. >>> >>> Anyway - in my minimal image, like in the fat image there seems to be a surprising amount of bytestrings (4mb worth?). I think that might need some digging into? It seems like a lot somehow. Although Benâs neat experiment of zipping strings shows thatâs not a real route. >>> >>> In a deployed minimal image - maybe I can get rid of some other things like MethodChangeRecords or MCMethodDefiniionâs (but they are smaller wins - but noticeable) >>> >>> Class code space # instances inst space percent inst average size >>> ByteString 2640 37365 4823848 21.50 129.10 >>> Array 3742 53002 3961944 17.60 74.75 >>> CompiledMethod 19159 30481 2912968 13.00 95.57 >>> Association 1148 58348 1867136 8.30 32.00 >>> MethodChangeRecord 431 34312 1097984 4.90 32.00 >>> ByteArray 4605 290 908728 4.00 3133.54 >>> ByteSymbol 1698 22689 840168 3.70 37.03 >>> IdentitySet 408 19076 610432 2.70 32.00 >>> MethodDictionary 3310 3520 608688 2.70 172.92 >>> WeakArray 1758 3024 597824 2.70 197.69 >>> MCMethodDefinition 4318 6659 426176 1.90 64.00 >>> Protocol 1679 8382 268224 1.20 32.00 >>> OrderedCollection 6555 5509 220360 1.00 40.00 >>> >>> As an aside - my Gitlab project is public, the scripts that load things up are in ./scripts (build.sh, and minimal.st <http://minimal.st/> and loadlocal.st <http://loadlocal.st/>) >>> >>> Tim >>> >>>> On 15 Aug 2017, at 08:02, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 4:42 PM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >>>> Hi Guille - just running SpaceTally on my dev image to get a feel for it. It turns out that in the minimal images youâve been creating, its not loaded (makes sense). >>>> >>>> Yup, it's loaded afterwards. >>>> >>>> All packages are loaded through metacello baselines. We should start refactoring and making standalone projects, each one with a baseline for himself, and his own dependencies described. >>>> >>>> I was checking on your gitlab and I have probably no access: how are you finally loading packages in the bootstrap image? Can you share that with us in text? I'd like to improve that situation. >>>> >>>> Iâm wondering if there is an easy way to import it in (I guess that package should be in the Pharo git tree I cloned to get Fuel loaded right? Or is there a separate standalone source?). >>>> >>>> Yes it is, you can get the package programatically doing >>>> >>>> SpaceTally package name >>>> >>>> And furthermore, get the baseline that currently is loading by doing >>>> >>>> package := SpaceTally package name. >>>> BaselineOf subclasses select: [ :e | >>>> e project version packages anySatisfy: [ :p | p name = package ]]. >>>> >>>> >>>> Thanks for all the support, and your email about why the contexts stack up is very well received (I will comment over there). >>>> >>>> By the way - it looks like Martin Fowler picked up on this announcement - so maybe we might get some interest from his mass of followers. >>>> >>>> Tim >>>> >>>>> On 14 Aug 2017, at 10:49, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Hi Tim, >>>>> >>>>> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 11:41 AM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >>>>> Hey guys, thanks for your enthusiasm around this - and I cannot stress enough how this was only possible because of the work that has gone into making Pharo (in particular the 64bit image, as well as having a minimal image, and some great blog posts on serialising contexts) as well as the patience from everyone in answering questions and helping me get it all working. >>>>> >>>>> Iâm still quite keen to get my execution time back down under 800ms and Iâd like to actually get back to writing a few skills to automate a few things around my house. >>>>> >>>>> To Answer Denisâ question - >>>>> >>>>> My final footprint is 30.4mb - thats composed of a 22mb image (with a simple example that pulls in Fuel, ZTimestamp and the S3 Library which depends on XMLParser) and then the VM (from which I removed obvious dllâs). >>>>> >>>>> In my original experiments with a 6.0 minimal image - I did manage to get to a 13.4mb image (which started out as 12mb original size, and then loaded in STON and had only a simple clock example). I think the sweet spot is around 20mb total footprint as that seems to get me into the 450ms-900ms range. >>>>> >>>>> The 7.0 min image now starts out at 15mb and then Iâm not sure why loading Fuel, S3 and XMLParser takes 7mb (it seems big to me - but Iâve not dug into that). >>>>> >>>>> You can do further space analysis using the following expression >>>>> >>>>> SpaceTally new printSpaceAnalysis >>>>> >>>>> You can do that in an eval and check what's taking space. With measures we can iterate and improve :). >>>>> >>>>> Iâve also found (and this on the back of unserialising the context in my example) that the way we build images has 15+ saved stack sessions that have saved on top of each other from the way we build up the images. I donât yet know the implications of size/speed of these - but we need a better way of folding executions when we snapshot headless images. Iâm also not clear if there are any other startup tasks that take precious time (this also has implications for our fat development images as they take much longer to appear than they really should). >>>>> >>>>> I'm working on this as I'm writing this mail ;) >>>>> >>>>> https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20309 <https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20309> >>>>> https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/196 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/196> >>>>> >>>>> I'll write down the implications further in a different thread. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Iâll be exploring some of these size/speed tradeoffâs in follow on messages. >>>>> >>>>> But once again, a big thanks - Iâve not enjoyed programming like this for ages. >>>>> >>>>> Tim >>>>> >>>>>> On 12 Aug 2017, at 16:26, Ben Coman <btc(a)openInWorld.com <mailto:btc@openInWorld.com>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> hi Tim, >>>>>> >>>>>> That is..... AWESOME! >>>>>> >>>>>> Very nice delivery - it flowed well with great narration. >>>>>> >>>>>> I loved @2:17 "this is the interesting piece, because PharoLambda has serialized the execution context of its application and saved it into [my S3 bucket] ... [then on the local machine] rematerializes a debugger [on that context]." >>>>>> >>>>>> There is a clarity in your video presentation that really may intrigue outsiders. As a community we should push this on the usual hacker forums - ycombinator could be a good starting point (but I'm locked out of my account there). >>>>>> An enticing title could be... >>>>>> "Debugging Lambdas by re-materializing saved execution contexts on your local machine." >>>>>> >>>>>> cheers -ben >>>>>> >>>>>> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 3:37 PM, Denis Kudriashov <dionisiydk(a)gmail.com <mailto:dionisiydk@gmail.com>> wrote: >>>>>> This is cool Tim. >>>>>> >>>>>> So what image size you deployed at the end? >>>>>> >>>>>> 2017-08-10 15:47 GMT+02:00 Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>>: >>>>>> I just wanted to thank everyone for their help in getting my pet project further along, so that now I can announce that PharoLambda is now working with the V7 minimal image and also supports post mortem debugging by saving a zipped fuel context onto S3. >>>>>> >>>>>> This latter item is particularly satisfying as at a recent serverless conference (JeffConf) there was a panel where poor development tools on serverless platforms was highlighted as a real problem. >>>>>> >>>>>> In our community weâve had these kinds of tools at our fingertips for ages - but I donât think the wider development community has really noticed. Debugging something short lived like a Lambda execution is quite startling, as the current answer is âadd more loggingâ, and we all know that sucks. To this end, Iâve created a little screencast showing this in action - and it was pretty cool because it was a real example I encountered when I got everything working and was trying my test application out. >>>>>> >>>>>> Iâve also put a bit of work into tuning the excellent GitLab CI tools, so that I can cache many of the artefacts used between different build runs (this might also be of interest to others using CI systems). >>>>>> >>>>>> The Gitlab project is on: https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda <https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda> >>>>>> And the screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNCT1hLA3E <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNCT1hLA3E> >>>>>> >>>>>> Tim >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> On 15 Jul 2017, at 00:39, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Hi - Iâve been playing around with getting Pharo to run well on AWS Lambda. Itâs early days, but I though it might be interesting to share what Iâve learned so far. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Usage examples and code at https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda <https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> With help from many of the folks here, Iâve been able to get a simple example to run in 500ms-1200ms with a minimal Pharo 6 image. You can easily try it out yourself. This seems slightly better than what the GoLang folks have been able to do. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Tim >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> >>>>> Guille Polito >>>>> >>>>> Research Engineer >>>>> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >>>>> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> >>>> Guille Polito >>>> >>>> Research Engineer >>>> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >>>> >>>> >>>> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >>>> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Guille Polito >>> >>> Research Engineer >>> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >>> >>> >>> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >>> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Guille Polito >>> >>> Research Engineer >>> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >>> >>> >>> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >>> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Guille Polito >> >> Research Engineer >> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >> >> >> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 >

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] PharoLambda 1.5 - Pharo running on AWS Lambda now with saved Debug sessions via S3

by Tim Mackinnon

Just thought I would report back a bit more on this - The Unicode change doesnât work in my case (possibly not for command line Pharo as well) as I get an error where OS filenameâs need unicode support (actually I think this is where its trying to write to stdout, but I didnât dig more into this): Error: Instances of UndefinedObject are not indexable UndefinedObject(Object)>>error: UndefinedObject(Object)>>errorNotIndexable UndefinedObject(Object)>>size Unicode class>>isLetter: Character>>isLetter Path class>>isAbsoluteWindowsPath: Path class>>from:delimiter: MacStore(FileSystemStore)>>pathFromString: FileSystem>>pathFromString: ByteString(String)>>asPathWith: FileSystem>>pathFromObject: FileSystem>>referenceTo: ByteString(String)>>asFileReference FileStream class>>fullName: FileStream class>>fileNamed: SmalltalkImage>>openLog I was able to improve on Guilleâs warning about how to safely clear up monticello/metacello (and not use become: String new) with the following (I actually think Metacello should provide a #cleanUp method, so I raised a pr for consideration) logger cr; nextPutAll: '>Removing Clearing MC Registry'. MetacelloProjectRegistration resetRegistry. Iâm then able to be by image down from 22mb to 13.8 (which is pretty good). As a further experiment I also noticed that there is a fair amount of space trapped in Protocols and ClassOrganisation - so I tried clearing those out (as they are lazily cached) with: Smalltalk allClassesAndTraits do: [:c | c basicOrganization: nil ]. This seems to give me a further 1mb back (but I haveât tried performance tests on this, but my naive assumption is that in a running system that isnât adding/manipulating code - that I donât think Protocols are used?). So Iâm now at 21mb. Tim > On 16 Aug 2017, at 10:53, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: > Hi, tracing through your changes - it looks like: > > Smalltalk cleanUp: true except: #() confirming: false. > Takes care of all the non-unicode changes you proposed (and it seems like its a known cleanup protocol). > > I based my script on #cleanupForRelease ^^. But I did not just blindly execute it as is because I wanted to understand the implications of each line. > > I wonder if the Unicode change is worth it/risky as many web based services I might connect to with Zinc do support Unicode so maybe I should keep that one in. (I will for now - might verify how much of a difference it really makes) > > No, it should not break any encoding/decoding. The changes I proposed will just nil out two things: > > - the uppercase/lowercase mapping unicode tables that says for each codepoint if the codepoint is uppercase/lowercase and allows transformations from/to uppercase/lowercase. This means that these may not work as expected: > > aChar asLowercase > aChar asUppercase > aChar toLowercase > aChar toUppercase > > - the unicode classification table that says if a character is letter or digit, and so on. This means that these may not work as expected: > > aChar isLetter > aChar isDigit > aChar isAlphaNumeric > > I think my next port of call is cleanUp for Monticello/Metacello as I see a fair amount of that stuff floating around in my image (after Iâve used it to bootstrap my code). > > Tim > >> On 16 Aug 2017, at 02:32, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> Actually it happens first that monticello is "nicely" coupled with the changeset system and logs all the source code loaded in change sets :D :/ Â¬Â¬. Also, the first two strings in terms of size are related to unicode tables (we should put them in files instead of in the image and load them on demand), and the two biggest arrays also to unicode. I just tried the following in a clean bootstrapped "minimal" image (metacello): >> >> "Careful, this will make that #isLetter, #isUppercase #isLowercase, #toLowercase and #toUppercase only work on ascii" >> Character characterSet: nil. >> Unicode classPool at: #GeneralCategory put: nil. >> Unicode classPool at: #DecimalProperty put: nil. >> >> UnicodeDefinition removeFromSystem. >> ChangeSet removeChangeSetsNamedSuchThat: [ :each | true ]. >> ChangeSet resetCurrentToNewUnnamedChangeSet. >> MCDefinition clearInstances. >> Undeclared removeUnreferencedKeys. >> Smalltalk garbageCollect. >> >> like this: >> >> ./vm/pharo Pharo7.0-metacello-32bit-fa236b7.image eval --save "Character characterSet: nil. Unicode classPool at: #GeneralCategory put: nil. Unicode classPool at: #DecimalProperty put: nil. UnicodeDefinitions removeFromSystem. ChangeSet removeChangeSetsNamedSuchThat: [ :each | true ]. ChangeSet resetCurrentToNewUnnamedChangeSet. MCDefinition clearInstances. Undeclared removeUnreferencedKeys. Smalltalk garbageCollect." >> >> and my image went down from 11MB to 6.6MB (7.0 MB if I don't change back to ascii with the first three lines) >> >> Then I tried a tally: >> >> ./vm/pharo Pharo7.0-metacello-32bit-fa236b7.image save spacetally >> >> ./vm/pharo spacetally.image eval --save "repo := MCFileTreeRepository new directory: '../src' asFileReference. version := repo loadVersionFromFileNamed: 'Tool-Profilers.package'. version load." >> >> re-clean since i loaded some packages >> >> ./vm/pharo spacetally.image eval --save "ChangeSet removeChangeSetsNamedSuchThat: [ :each | true ]. ChangeSet resetCurrentToNewUnnamedChangeSet. MCDefinition clearInstances. Undeclared removeUnreferencedKeys. Smalltalk garbageCollect." >> >> This image is now 6.6MB (7.1MB with the unicode large arrays), 4.1% of strings (274k) what seems reasonable. Remaining big strings are Pharo's licence, the buffer of the changes file and then some class comments (shouldn't they be fetched from disk as any other method source code?). >> >> Making again a tally shows that ~30% of the space is taken by Arrays and 21.9% by compiled methods. But, BUT! :) I have ~30k arrays and lots of collections also: >> >> "MethodDictionary" 2872 + >> "IdentitySet" 12781 + >> "OrderedCollection" 4398 + >> "Set" 2959 + >> "Dictionary" 1997 + >> "IdentityDictionary" 454 >> ----------------------------------------------- >> 25461 >> >> So there are ~5k arrays that are used outside collections. >> >> Worth exploring a bit more I think. >> >> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 1:23 AM, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 11:26 PM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >> Hi Guille/Ben - I got a quick moment to try the SpaceTally (aside: it seems very convoluted to load a single package into the image, I was trying to avoid having to create a baselineOf for something so simple - I ended up with: >> >> I know, I also believe we have to simplify this. In any case, baselines are healthy as they allow to also express dependencies. Otherwise you'll end up loading dependencies by hand. We'll fix this soon I hope. >> >> >> repo := MCFileTreeRepository new directory: './bootstrap' asFileReference. >> version := repo loadVersionFromFileNamed: 'Tool-Profilers.package'. >> version load. >> >> Anyway - in my minimal image, like in the fat image there seems to be a surprising amount of bytestrings (4mb worth?). I think that might need some digging into? It seems like a lot somehow. Although Benâs neat experiment of zipping strings shows thatâs not a real route. >> >> In a deployed minimal image - maybe I can get rid of some other things like MethodChangeRecords or MCMethodDefiniionâs (but they are smaller wins - but noticeable) >> >> Class code space # instances inst space percent inst average size >> ByteString 2640 37365 4823848 21.50 129.10 >> Array 3742 53002 3961944 17.60 74.75 >> CompiledMethod 19159 30481 2912968 13.00 95.57 >> Association 1148 58348 1867136 8.30 32.00 >> MethodChangeRecord 431 34312 1097984 4.90 32.00 >> ByteArray 4605 290 908728 4.00 3133.54 >> ByteSymbol 1698 22689 840168 3.70 37.03 >> IdentitySet 408 19076 610432 2.70 32.00 >> MethodDictionary 3310 3520 608688 2.70 172.92 >> WeakArray 1758 3024 597824 2.70 197.69 >> MCMethodDefinition 4318 6659 426176 1.90 64.00 >> Protocol 1679 8382 268224 1.20 32.00 >> OrderedCollection 6555 5509 220360 1.00 40.00 >> >> As an aside - my Gitlab project is public, the scripts that load things up are in ./scripts (build.sh, and minimal.st <http://minimal.st/> and loadlocal.st <http://loadlocal.st/>) >> >> Tim >> >>> On 15 Aug 2017, at 08:02, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 4:42 PM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >>> Hi Guille - just running SpaceTally on my dev image to get a feel for it. It turns out that in the minimal images youâve been creating, its not loaded (makes sense). >>> >>> Yup, it's loaded afterwards. >>> >>> All packages are loaded through metacello baselines. We should start refactoring and making standalone projects, each one with a baseline for himself, and his own dependencies described. >>> >>> I was checking on your gitlab and I have probably no access: how are you finally loading packages in the bootstrap image? Can you share that with us in text? I'd like to improve that situation. >>> >>> Iâm wondering if there is an easy way to import it in (I guess that package should be in the Pharo git tree I cloned to get Fuel loaded right? Or is there a separate standalone source?). >>> >>> Yes it is, you can get the package programatically doing >>> >>> SpaceTally package name >>> >>> And furthermore, get the baseline that currently is loading by doing >>> >>> package := SpaceTally package name. >>> BaselineOf subclasses select: [ :e | >>> e project version packages anySatisfy: [ :p | p name = package ]]. >>> >>> >>> Thanks for all the support, and your email about why the contexts stack up is very well received (I will comment over there). >>> >>> By the way - it looks like Martin Fowler picked up on this announcement - so maybe we might get some interest from his mass of followers. >>> >>> Tim >>> >>>> On 14 Aug 2017, at 10:49, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com <mailto:guillermopolito@gmail.com>> wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi Tim, >>>> >>>> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 11:41 AM, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >>>> Hey guys, thanks for your enthusiasm around this - and I cannot stress enough how this was only possible because of the work that has gone into making Pharo (in particular the 64bit image, as well as having a minimal image, and some great blog posts on serialising contexts) as well as the patience from everyone in answering questions and helping me get it all working. >>>> >>>> Iâm still quite keen to get my execution time back down under 800ms and Iâd like to actually get back to writing a few skills to automate a few things around my house. >>>> >>>> To Answer Denisâ question - >>>> >>>> My final footprint is 30.4mb - thats composed of a 22mb image (with a simple example that pulls in Fuel, ZTimestamp and the S3 Library which depends on XMLParser) and then the VM (from which I removed obvious dllâs). >>>> >>>> In my original experiments with a 6.0 minimal image - I did manage to get to a 13.4mb image (which started out as 12mb original size, and then loaded in STON and had only a simple clock example). I think the sweet spot is around 20mb total footprint as that seems to get me into the 450ms-900ms range. >>>> >>>> The 7.0 min image now starts out at 15mb and then Iâm not sure why loading Fuel, S3 and XMLParser takes 7mb (it seems big to me - but Iâve not dug into that). >>>> >>>> You can do further space analysis using the following expression >>>> >>>> SpaceTally new printSpaceAnalysis >>>> >>>> You can do that in an eval and check what's taking space. With measures we can iterate and improve :). >>>> >>>> Iâve also found (and this on the back of unserialising the context in my example) that the way we build images has 15+ saved stack sessions that have saved on top of each other from the way we build up the images. I donât yet know the implications of size/speed of these - but we need a better way of folding executions when we snapshot headless images. Iâm also not clear if there are any other startup tasks that take precious time (this also has implications for our fat development images as they take much longer to appear than they really should). >>>> >>>> I'm working on this as I'm writing this mail ;) >>>> >>>> https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20309 <https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/20309> >>>> https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/196 <https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/196> >>>> >>>> I'll write down the implications further in a different thread. >>>> >>>> >>>> Iâll be exploring some of these size/speed tradeoffâs in follow on messages. >>>> >>>> But once again, a big thanks - Iâve not enjoyed programming like this for ages. >>>> >>>> Tim >>>> >>>>> On 12 Aug 2017, at 16:26, Ben Coman <btc(a)openInWorld.com <mailto:btc@openInWorld.com>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> hi Tim, >>>>> >>>>> That is..... AWESOME! >>>>> >>>>> Very nice delivery - it flowed well with great narration. >>>>> >>>>> I loved @2:17 "this is the interesting piece, because PharoLambda has serialized the execution context of its application and saved it into [my S3 bucket] ... [then on the local machine] rematerializes a debugger [on that context]." >>>>> >>>>> There is a clarity in your video presentation that really may intrigue outsiders. As a community we should push this on the usual hacker forums - ycombinator could be a good starting point (but I'm locked out of my account there). >>>>> An enticing title could be... >>>>> "Debugging Lambdas by re-materializing saved execution contexts on your local machine." >>>>> >>>>> cheers -ben >>>>> >>>>> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 3:37 PM, Denis Kudriashov <dionisiydk(a)gmail.com <mailto:dionisiydk@gmail.com>> wrote: >>>>> This is cool Tim. >>>>> >>>>> So what image size you deployed at the end? >>>>> >>>>> 2017-08-10 15:47 GMT+02:00 Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>>: >>>>> I just wanted to thank everyone for their help in getting my pet project further along, so that now I can announce that PharoLambda is now working with the V7 minimal image and also supports post mortem debugging by saving a zipped fuel context onto S3. >>>>> >>>>> This latter item is particularly satisfying as at a recent serverless conference (JeffConf) there was a panel where poor development tools on serverless platforms was highlighted as a real problem. >>>>> >>>>> In our community weâve had these kinds of tools at our fingertips for ages - but I donât think the wider development community has really noticed. Debugging something short lived like a Lambda execution is quite startling, as the current answer is âadd more loggingâ, and we all know that sucks. To this end, Iâve created a little screencast showing this in action - and it was pretty cool because it was a real example I encountered when I got everything working and was trying my test application out. >>>>> >>>>> Iâve also put a bit of work into tuning the excellent GitLab CI tools, so that I can cache many of the artefacts used between different build runs (this might also be of interest to others using CI systems). >>>>> >>>>> The Gitlab project is on: https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda <https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda> >>>>> And the screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNCT1hLA3E <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNNCT1hLA3E> >>>>> >>>>> Tim >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On 15 Jul 2017, at 00:39, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works <mailto:tim@testit.works>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi - Iâve been playing around with getting Pharo to run well on AWS Lambda. Itâs early days, but I though it might be interesting to share what Iâve learned so far. >>>>>> >>>>>> Usage examples and code at https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda <https://gitlab.com/macta/PharoLambda> >>>>>> >>>>>> With help from many of the folks here, Iâve been able to get a simple example to run in 500ms-1200ms with a minimal Pharo 6 image. You can easily try it out yourself. This seems slightly better than what the GoLang folks have been able to do. >>>>>> >>>>>> Tim >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> >>>> Guille Polito >>>> >>>> Research Engineer >>>> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >>>> >>>> >>>> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >>>> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Guille Polito >>> >>> Research Engineer >>> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >>> >>> >>> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >>> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Guille Polito >> >> Research Engineer >> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >> >> >> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >> >> >> -- >> >> Guille Polito >> >> Research Engineer >> French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> >> >> >> Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> >> Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13 <tel:+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> > > > > -- > > Guille Polito > > Research Engineer > French National Center for Scientific Research - http://www.cnrs.fr <http://www.cnrs.fr/> > > > Web: http://guillep.github.io <http://guillep.github.io/> > Phone: +33 06 52 70 66 13

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] What is proper fix for this?

by Esteban A. Maringolo

2017-08-17 6:51 GMT-03:00 Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com>: > > On 17 Aug 2017, at 11:34, jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de wrote: > > Am 17.08.17 um 11:31 schrieb Esteban Lorenzano: > >>> On 17 Aug 2017, at 11:28, jtuchel(a)objektfabrik.de wrote: > >>> > >>> Herby, > >>> > >>> back when Alan was maintaining Glorp, he took care for portability, he even maintained the port to VA Smalltalk, IIRC. Niall and Tim(?) at Cincom also try not to break any dialect in their changes and they also work on keeping things portable. I am not sure there ever was any (semi-)automated process to keep ports in sync, my guess would be that that is not the case. > >>> > >>> What I am very sure of is that the ppl at Cincom would welcome any volunteers to support them in keeping things portable and improve the ecosystem for this. > >>> Is any of you going to be at ESUG? > >> I will, but I will not maintain Glorp portâ¦ I have just too much work :) > > Same for me. I am not a regular Pharo user, so I cannot do it. > > yeahâ¦ too bad :( > âunofficial maintainerâ of Glorp port is Esteban Maringolo. But since he has to make a living (and right now he is working on VW, not Pharo), he cannot do it but lightly. > Other maintainers should be the people using it, so the addition of Herby is welcome (Esteban M. will check at when he has timeâ¦ but at least now is available for other people to check). Glorp was built with portability in mind, but it's too "old school", the packaging itself is a nightmare. And most of the design, and "portable" parts are designed around VW database layers. The code sharing is a thing in its own, I had to "adapt" a Monticello exporter in VW to get better package names instead of a single "Glorp" package. FileTree is stilll not available in Cincom, Martin McLure said they're working in a new Cypress spec that'd work in VW as well, I look forward to see that, because I'd need it to move code back/forth Pharo and VW. Last year I did a port to Pharo from the latest availalable version in Cincom and tried to keep both in sync, but the feedback loops are quite different in Pharo than Cincom, skillsets are also different (I'm still struggling with Store), and even with some support, Cincom doesn't have portability as a main objective, Glorp today is a means to and end, and that end is their SCM, Store. So modifying a core tool just to be more portable is not a priority for them. Also the way Glorp is made portable is very differently from how Seaside is done, Glorp has a lot of #isVW, #isSqueak, #isPharo, etc... which I removed from the latest port. The last time I did not dare to "hard-fork" the whole project and refactor it, maybe the next time. > I myself keep track of my own beast: Voyageâ¦ but thankfully I can just check time to time since we have a small but active community around it. Ideal situation for Glorp would be having the same. I'm a "happy"[1] user of ORMs, and used them in Smalltalk for over a decade (in Pharo for a couple of years), unfortunately for Glorp, I've been coding for GemStone based projects and now also Glorp but in VW, with SQLite for a minimal part of the application. So, bottom line, it takes me some time to catch-up and get into ORM "mode", since it's something I'm not doing every day. Best regards! Esteban A. Maringolo

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] How to find where pharo is killing processor power?

by Dimitris Chloupis

Are you aware of the profile tools inside Pharo ? They capture execution and offer detailed analysis of how much time is spent on each task. One of it can be found in World Menu -> Tools -> Time Profiler Generally speaking a while loop that runs all the time without any kind of delays is a very popular way to consume 100%. Even if the while loop does nothing it will still consume %100 because even executing an empty loops has costs. Two solution is inserting a delay in the loop so the loop have to wait for 1 millisecond or less depending your demands or just make sure the loop has a very specific condition so it executes only when you need to. On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 10:04 PM sergio ruiz <sergio.rrd(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > hey all.. my current pharo implementation is running super serious > processor power, but it shouldnât be doing much. > > [image: Activity_Monitor__All_Processes__and_Pharo_image.jpg] > > how would I go about tracking this inside the pharo image? > > Thanks! > > > ---- > peace, > sergio > photographer, journalist, visionary > > Public Key: http://bit.ly/29z9fG0 > #BitMessage BM-NBaswViL21xqgg9STRJjaJaUoyiNe2dV > http://www.Village-Buzz.com <http://www.village-buzz.com/> > http://www.ThoseOptimizeGuys.com <http://www.thoseoptimizeguys.com/> > http://www.coffee-black.com > http://www.painlessfrugality.com > http://www.twitter.com/sergio_101 > http://www.facebook.com/sergio101 >

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Encoding Login information in your image (safely)

by Dimitris Chloupis

I am clueless when it comes to encryption and safety , so as you would expect I will offer my opinion on this. I do not think that encryption from the side of Pharo would be a good idea because having the image you have access to everything . Including any kind of context even its not stored in a variable. I think the safest way is not to use Pharo and do this in C and put this in a DLL which Pharo cannot access other than calling its functions. This way you can be certain that the user has no way to hack the data unless of course its disassemble the DLL and inspect the memory but that would be much harder than do it in Pharo. Of course an average Pharo user/coder does not have this technical knowledge , sometime we cannot even figure out UFFI problems but a determined hacker wont have an issue disassembling the DLL (reading the machine code). Of course you could use one of the countless security libraries for C from Pharo using UFFI. But yeah personally I would not allow Pharo to have any kind of access to that information just call DLL function that will reply only if a yes/no about the success of the login attempt. The rest I would leave it to my DLL and the C security library. But then I am not a believer of safety of any kind. Life is very unsafe but of course its wise to try to make it safer :) On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 7:55 PM Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works> wrote: > Hi - Iâm struggling to find something that I saw that discussed this issue > kind of. > > In my image (its actually a headless one - but this could apply to a fat > image too) - I build an application that needs access to a service (in > this case an S3 bucket). > > The AWS library Iâm using (but others are similar) has an AWSLogin class > singleton where I can specify a username and password. So in a playground I > can do that and test it all works etc. > > However, for deployment its never a good idea to encode this info into > your code (particularly if you use Iceberg and GitHub) - SO, I am using > secret variable support in GitLab - which Iâve seen many projects do in > other languages. This way, I type in those details into an encrypted place > in the CI and it then exposes them as temporary variables when I build my > system (so far so good). > > Now in my build - I run a little script like this and pass on those > variables (neatly, Gitlab doesnât show their values in its logs): > > ./pharo Pharo.image --no-default-preferences --save --quit st config.st \ > *"{**â**$USER'. â$PWD'}"* > > > In config.st I then extract these command line parameters (the ST handler > nicely exposes the extra parameter array so I didnât have to do anything > custom) > > "Expect image to be called with params as a last arg array" > config := Array readFrom: Smalltalk arguments last. > *user* := config at: 1. > *pwd* := config at: 2. > > DBConfig default > accessKey: user; > pKey: pwd; > yourself. > > So it all looks pretty good so far - however it occurs to me that if you get hold of a .image and were to browse all of the Strings - e.g. > > ./pharo Pharo.image eval "(ByteString allInstances)â > > I think you would ulimtately find those strings unless the Class encrypts them in some way right? > > So Iâm wondering why we donât have an EncryptedString object for just this (Iâve seen lots of cryptography libraries etc), but isnât this quite a common thing to deal with? And should Pharo provide something that library writers adopt to encourage better image safety? Or am I wrong in my analysis? > > > Tim > > >

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

by Denis Kudriashov

Yes. Also simple solution can be to override compiler of problem classes to return old compiler. I know it is better to rewrite code but it can be not simple task when there are a lot of ffi-methods. 2017-08-17 13:17 GMT+02:00 Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com>: > > > On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 1:09 PM, Denis Kudriashov <dionisiydk(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > >> >> Sorry, but we will not accept old pragma format (as I said, is invalidâ¦ >>> and ugly ;) ). >> >> >> But we will be able load old compiler (when it will be removed from >> standard image) to support such old code >> > > But then you should compile such code with the old compiler, not make opal > compatible, no? > > >> >> 2017-08-17 11:48 GMT+02:00 Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com>: >> >>> hi, >>> >>> Old way to do FFI calls is no longer supported on Pharo, but this >>> deprecation is very old (since Pharo 2). Now, in Pharo 4 we replaced the >>> compiler (for OpalCompiler) and we no longer supported âpragma-likeâ calls, >>> in part because they are âinvalidâ pragma calls (they do not agrees with >>> pragma syntax) and in part because the way to go in pharo is using UFFI >>> (before UFFI it was NB which was largely compatible). >>> >>> I donât know why ZeroMQ bindings are made using old format, but the way >>> to advance them is to >>> >>> > On 16 Aug 2017, at 23:31, bdurin <bruno.durin(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> > >>> > Hi, >>> > >>> > I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The >>> RBParser >>> > fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely >>> breaks down >>> > the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I >>> understand all >>> > use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed >>> and >>> > some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug. >>> Overall >>> > this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me. >>> > >>> > In order to reproduce this: >>> > - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash) >>> > - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &) >>> > - add the following repository >>> > MCSmalltalkhubRepository >>> > owner: 'panuw' >>> > project: 'zeromq' >>> > user: '' >>> > password: '' >>> > - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure >>> if >>> > the latter is needed) >>> > - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: >>> of the >>> > ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood >>> error >>> > (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on >>> > "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way: >>> > apiZmqBind: s >>> > ocket to: endpoint <cdecl >>> > - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red >>> box: >>> > then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you >>> are >>> > obstinate and "lucky" you will succeed in crashing the image. >>> > - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground >>> > RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint >>> > <cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) >>> module:''zmq''> >>> > ^self externalCallFailed'. >>> > and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root >>> cause is >>> > that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API >>> defined by >>> > its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so >>> is not >>> > a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and >>> setting >>> > the corresponding instance variables.) >>> > >>> > 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various >>> > versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for >>> zmq. It >>> > dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years >>> and a >>> > half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017). >>> > I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed >>> because >>> > of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI >>> mechanisms, I >>> > quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in >>> pragma >>> > are not supported anymore. >>> > I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I >>> > described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI >>> > declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has >>> already >>> > switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I >>> did not >>> > try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5). >>> > Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version >>> is? >>> > It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features >>> used >>> > by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the >>> > mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is >>> likely to >>> > work. >>> > Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago >>> cannot >>> > work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which >>> dates >>> > back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)? >>> > I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my >>> mind, >>> > either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system >>> should >>> > be there to help users. >>> >>> Most of Pharo is largely compatible. Now, we cannot keep compatibility >>> in some areas more than a couple of versions back because the effort of >>> advance Pharo *and* keep compatibility is just too much. >>> - FFI changed a lot. >>> - Morphic changed something. >>> - Most of the rest is basically the same (just better). >>> >>> > 2) Another question about versions: Pharo 6 is out since June, Pharo 7 >>> is >>> > under development. What is the status of Pharo 5? Already history or >>> still >>> > relevant? >>> > I am asking because I corrected the problem of FFI declaration in >>> pragma, >>> > but it seems to me that it is not useful to publish this change as >>> starting >>> > from Pharo 6 this way to do FFI is not supported. So should I >>> contribute? If >>> > yes, how to "attach" the patch to Pharo 5? >>> >>> Pharo5 is history. >>> We keep one version back (now Pharo6) >>> Again, a matter of effort and resources. >>> >>> > 3) As explained above, in Pharo 5, looking at the source trigger an >>> error. >>> > Even if this looks like a rare corner case, I think that the developer >>> tools >>> > should not trigger bugs when looking at source code, even less trigger >>> a red >>> > box in the source code viewer (in the browser, but the problem also >>> occurs >>> > --less strongly-- when looking at the object in an inspector: there >>> should >>> > not be "error printing" when it is only a syntax highlight problem). >>> If the >>> > code is malformed and the parser used to highlight syntax fails, there >>> > should be a fallback such as the source code being displayed without >>> any >>> > highlight. It sends a very bad impression to have this kind of bugs >>> when one >>> > simply wants to look at code, not even running it. >>> > I have not dug enough in this area of Pharo, but it seems to me that >>> the >>> > parser that is used to build the AST for code execution / method >>> compilation >>> > should not be the same as the parser used to highligh syntax. (Of >>> course I >>> > am not saying that there should be 2 distincts code base for the 2 >>> parsers, >>> > but they should at least run differently.) The first one must be >>> strict with >>> > errors as a malformed AST cannot be executed. The second one must be >>> > lenient, as a malformed AST does not prevent to print the string of the >>> > source code. Of course, at the end if the code is malformed there will >>> be an >>> > error at execution, but if the source code can be displayed even when >>> it is >>> > malformed, at least I have the opportunity to correct it so that it >>> runs >>> > correctly. (In this case, convert the old FFI pragma declaration into a >>> > fficall:) >>> > I may be missing something here but if this works the same in the most >>> > up-to-date version of Pharo, the same kind of error might appear again. >>> > What do you think? >>> >>> Sorry, but we will not accept old pragma format (as I said, is invalidâ¦ >>> and ugly ;) ). >>> What I suggest is to rewrite the bindings of ZeroMQ to UFFI: it should >>> be very straight forward and you will be contributing to the community in a >>> way that will remain quite some years at least. >>> > >>> > 4) A final remark: let us classify people as Beginner/Confirmed in >>> > programming and B/C in Pharo (A BB is a beginner in programming and in >>> > Pharo, a CC confirmed in both, a BC cannot exists and CB are those who >>> > discover Pharo while knowing well other languages). Pharo seems to be >>> great >>> > for BB and CC. I went through the MOOC and the various books which are >>> > great. My first steps in Pharo environment were great. >>> > As a CC it seems to be great also as in the very small area of the >>> system >>> > where I took the time to drill into all the details, I could very >>> easily >>> > change things (and correct a bug), that would have been very difficult >>> to >>> > understand and change in a lot of other languages. Even hacking the VM >>> seems >>> > to be possible for a non-VM expert. >>> > But I consider myself rather as a CB. As such I tend to try and do >>> complex >>> > things that I usually do in other languages and run into tricky >>> problems. >>> > These problems are rather dealt with and corrected by Pharo developers >>> but >>> > that as a user I would expect them to remain hidden to me or to be >>> clearly >>> > advertised in the docs. As compared to a BB, a CB is not going to stay >>> in a >>> > well delimited area where everything is smooth. >>> > True, in a way it is a very strong incentive to become a Pharo expert! >>> But I >>> > am wondering if this aspect could be improved. >>> >>> thing isâ¦ non OO programmers will have problems to understand a pure OO >>> language. >>> people working with Java, C#, C++ and others may think they do OO, but >>> they donât most of the timeâ¦ then, switching paradigms is hard work. >>> even worst, smalltalk syntax is considered âalienâ to people used to >>> algol-based languages. >>> >>> but we cannot do much more than we are trying to achieve in this area: >>> make Pharo more compatible with âthe rest of the worldâ when it make sense, >>> but strongly stay in our âalienessâ when it has sense (syntax, pureness, >>> etc.). >>> >>> Esteban >>> >>> > >>> > Thanks, >>> > Bruno >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > -- >>> > View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Parser-f >>> ailure-on-FFI-pragmas-declaration-in-Pharo-5-tp4961737.html >>> > Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >>> > >>> >>> >>> >> > > > -- > > > > Guille Polito > > > Research Engineer > > French National Center for Scientific Research - *http://www.cnrs.fr* > <http://www.cnrs.fr> > > > > *Web:* *http://guillep.github.io* <http://guillep.github.io> > > *Phone: *+33 06 52 70 66 13 <+33%206%2052%2070%2066%2013> >

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

by bdurin

Hi, Thank you Denis and Esteban for your help. I agree, the way to go is to rewrite correct UFFI bindings. Denis' solution seems fragile. About my points 3 and 4 I think I was not clear. I did not want to force old FFI syntax. I explained why I thought that the way Pharo 5 was failing at deprecated code was very misleading and gave a bad impression. About developer tools in Pharo, as far as I understand ideally everything should be done in Pharo, we should not have to use a text editor to develop, etc. So we should be able to access legacy, deprecated source code from within Pharo. This could work if the source code viewer did not enforce strict parsing rules. In Pharo 5, it fails badly and late. In Pharo 6 it fails early with a nice syntax error but it still prevents me from getting the code into Pharo. ZeroMQ are just bindings that I can easily rewrite. But what if I get the .mcz file of an old package whose code I do not know? It would not load. To get its code, I would have to learn about the .mcz format, dig into the .mcz archive and open the right file in a text editor to get the code declarations one by one. (Or if I am smarter I could hack FileIn to get the code declarations as an array of strings with no attempt at compiling and then copy paste the pieces.) It would be nice to be able to load an old deprecated code, let it run and fail and correct it live in the debugger for example. It would be even nicer to have the old syntax recognized and explicit warnings (or even suggested rewriting). About item 4, I have no problem with Smalltalk syntax or it being OO down the line. When I say that Pharo could be hard for people with programming experience, I was refering to the fact that one get easily caught by version problems, by legacy stuff that seems to be maintained and at some point stop working (and unless you read a lot the mailing list, it can be quite difficult to understand the source of the problem). To put this into perspective, I can give 2 examples in python: numpy and pandas. Numpy is a very mature library with very few problems. Most users of python are CPython users (Python implemented in C) and uses numpy without wondering. But I remember looking at pypy as a drop-in replacement for cpython at a time when pypy was not very mature and it had not been easy to find out that numy could not work with pypy because numpy depends on the C-API (hence CPython). (Now pypy has a dedicated numpy project which is correctly advertised.) Pandas is a python library that changes a lot and is maintained by few people. Often API or function behaviour changes from one version to the next. But both the documentation and the code (which emits deprecation warning when it detects old uses) help a lot the user in switching from one version to the other or detecting potential problems with old code, often without a complete error. The idea is that we can deal with a dog that groans before biting and that we tends to avoid dogs that bites without groaning before. In Pharo, I understand that cleaning old code and getting things very robust is very time-consuming and would not be worth the effort but having a way to alert the user that something is legacy stuff would be great. Maybe something like having the list of all packages and their version included in a given image version on https://pharo.org could be useful. Or having a process that maintain the state of all known packages in the Smalltalk repositories: for example there would be 4 states, actively developed, maintained, legacy and deprecated. "Actively developed" would be manually set on all packages that are worked on for the new version (is Iceberg in Pharo 7 a good example?). "Maintained" would be set on all packages predating a given version but tested for the given version. "Legacy" would be automatically set on all packages predating a given version and not tested (so use at your own risk). "Deprecated" would be manually set on packages that are reported as failing and are known to fail because of new design (for example old FFI when UFFI comes). The largest part of the packages would be automatically flagged as "legacy" so the tagging work would not be too large. (Maybe to bootstrap the tagging system, all packages published after Pharo 7 release would be flagged as "maintained" and all others as "legacy".) With this system, ZeroMQ would have been flagged as "legacy" since Pharo 5 and I would have expected failure. So I am not really talking about something to change in the language but rather in the development process of the language. If it is possible to set up a simple reporting system, the tagging could be done fast by all users. (For example, if one loads a package in a given Pharo version, one can click on an entry in the WorldMenu which runs a form to report to a given server the successful load or the error and flag the package accordingly.) Another idea would be to formalize improvements with a Pharo version of PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposal). These technical reports are very useful when digging into the internals of python after a strange error or something similar. Thanks, Bruno -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Parser-failure-on-FFI-pragmas-declaration-in-Pharo-5-… Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Aug. 17, 2017

Loading and saving packages to filetree repos

by Luke Gorrie

Hoi, I want to have a quick "cheat mode" for loading and saving the Smalltalk packages in my project. This is to make life easy for newbies who are not very familiar with Monticello and Metacello. The "cheat" is to assume that there is one filetree:// repository that contains all of the relevant packages, and all we need to do is load or save each of those packages in that repository. I have the loading part working already: repo := MCFileTreeRepository new directory: '/foo/bar/baz' asFileReference. repo allFileNames do: [ :file | (repo versionFromFileNamed: file) load. ]. but now I am wondering how to do the saving part? That is, given a path to a filetree repo like '/foo/bar/baz', how do I save each package in that repo i.e. export the code in the image? Ideally I would like the same operation to skip metadata that is likely to cause conflicts when the code is checked into Git later e.g. package timestamps and versions. Tips would be appreciated :).

Aug. 17, 2017

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

by Guillermo Polito

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 1:09 PM, Denis Kudriashov <dionisiydk(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Sorry, but we will not accept old pragma format (as I said, is invalidâ¦ >> and ugly ;) ). > > > But we will be able load old compiler (when it will be removed from > standard image) to support such old code > But then you should compile such code with the old compiler, not make opal compatible, no? > > 2017-08-17 11:48 GMT+02:00 Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com>: > >> hi, >> >> Old way to do FFI calls is no longer supported on Pharo, but this >> deprecation is very old (since Pharo 2). Now, in Pharo 4 we replaced the >> compiler (for OpalCompiler) and we no longer supported âpragma-likeâ calls, >> in part because they are âinvalidâ pragma calls (they do not agrees with >> pragma syntax) and in part because the way to go in pharo is using UFFI >> (before UFFI it was NB which was largely compatible). >> >> I donât know why ZeroMQ bindings are made using old format, but the way >> to advance them is to >> >> > On 16 Aug 2017, at 23:31, bdurin <bruno.durin(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> > Hi, >> > >> > I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The >> RBParser >> > fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks >> down >> > the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand >> all >> > use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and >> > some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug. >> Overall >> > this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me. >> > >> > In order to reproduce this: >> > - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash) >> > - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &) >> > - add the following repository >> > MCSmalltalkhubRepository >> > owner: 'panuw' >> > project: 'zeromq' >> > user: '' >> > password: '' >> > - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure >> if >> > the latter is needed) >> > - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: >> of the >> > ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error >> > (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on >> > "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way: >> > apiZmqBind: s >> > ocket to: endpoint <cdecl >> > - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red >> box: >> > then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you >> are >> > obstinate and "lucky" you will succeed in crashing the image. >> > - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground >> > RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint >> > <cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) module:''zmq''> >> > ^self externalCallFailed'. >> > and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root >> cause is >> > that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined >> by >> > its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is >> not >> > a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and >> setting >> > the corresponding instance variables.) >> > >> > 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various >> > versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for >> zmq. It >> > dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years >> and a >> > half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017). >> > I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed >> because >> > of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI >> mechanisms, I >> > quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in >> pragma >> > are not supported anymore. >> > I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I >> > described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI >> > declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already >> > switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I >> did not >> > try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5). >> > Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version >> is? >> > It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features >> used >> > by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the >> > mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely >> to >> > work. >> > Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago >> cannot >> > work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which >> dates >> > back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)? >> > I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my >> mind, >> > either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system >> should >> > be there to help users. >> >> Most of Pharo is largely compatible. Now, we cannot keep compatibility in >> some areas more than a couple of versions back because the effort of >> advance Pharo *and* keep compatibility is just too much. >> - FFI changed a lot. >> - Morphic changed something. >> - Most of the rest is basically the same (just better). >> >> > 2) Another question about versions: Pharo 6 is out since June, Pharo 7 >> is >> > under development. What is the status of Pharo 5? Already history or >> still >> > relevant? >> > I am asking because I corrected the problem of FFI declaration in >> pragma, >> > but it seems to me that it is not useful to publish this change as >> starting >> > from Pharo 6 this way to do FFI is not supported. So should I >> contribute? If >> > yes, how to "attach" the patch to Pharo 5? >> >> Pharo5 is history. >> We keep one version back (now Pharo6) >> Again, a matter of effort and resources. >> >> > 3) As explained above, in Pharo 5, looking at the source trigger an >> error. >> > Even if this looks like a rare corner case, I think that the developer >> tools >> > should not trigger bugs when looking at source code, even less trigger >> a red >> > box in the source code viewer (in the browser, but the problem also >> occurs >> > --less strongly-- when looking at the object in an inspector: there >> should >> > not be "error printing" when it is only a syntax highlight problem). If >> the >> > code is malformed and the parser used to highlight syntax fails, there >> > should be a fallback such as the source code being displayed without any >> > highlight. It sends a very bad impression to have this kind of bugs >> when one >> > simply wants to look at code, not even running it. >> > I have not dug enough in this area of Pharo, but it seems to me that the >> > parser that is used to build the AST for code execution / method >> compilation >> > should not be the same as the parser used to highligh syntax. (Of >> course I >> > am not saying that there should be 2 distincts code base for the 2 >> parsers, >> > but they should at least run differently.) The first one must be strict >> with >> > errors as a malformed AST cannot be executed. The second one must be >> > lenient, as a malformed AST does not prevent to print the string of the >> > source code. Of course, at the end if the code is malformed there will >> be an >> > error at execution, but if the source code can be displayed even when >> it is >> > malformed, at least I have the opportunity to correct it so that it runs >> > correctly. (In this case, convert the old FFI pragma declaration into a >> > fficall:) >> > I may be missing something here but if this works the same in the most >> > up-to-date version of Pharo, the same kind of error might appear again. >> > What do you think? >> >> Sorry, but we will not accept old pragma format (as I said, is invalidâ¦ >> and ugly ;) ). >> What I suggest is to rewrite the bindings of ZeroMQ to UFFI: it should be >> very straight forward and you will be contributing to the community in a >> way that will remain quite some years at least. >> > >> > 4) A final remark: let us classify people as Beginner/Confirmed in >> > programming and B/C in Pharo (A BB is a beginner in programming and in >> > Pharo, a CC confirmed in both, a BC cannot exists and CB are those who >> > discover Pharo while knowing well other languages). Pharo seems to be >> great >> > for BB and CC. I went through the MOOC and the various books which are >> > great. My first steps in Pharo environment were great. >> > As a CC it seems to be great also as in the very small area of the >> system >> > where I took the time to drill into all the details, I could very easily >> > change things (and correct a bug), that would have been very difficult >> to >> > understand and change in a lot of other languages. Even hacking the VM >> seems >> > to be possible for a non-VM expert. >> > But I consider myself rather as a CB. As such I tend to try and do >> complex >> > things that I usually do in other languages and run into tricky >> problems. >> > These problems are rather dealt with and corrected by Pharo developers >> but >> > that as a user I would expect them to remain hidden to me or to be >> clearly >> > advertised in the docs. As compared to a BB, a CB is not going to stay >> in a >> > well delimited area where everything is smooth. >> > True, in a way it is a very strong incentive to become a Pharo expert! >> But I >> > am wondering if this aspect could be improved. >> >> thing isâ¦ non OO programmers will have problems to understand a pure OO >> language. >> people working with Java, C#, C++ and others may think they do OO, but >> they donât most of the timeâ¦ then, switching paradigms is hard work. >> even worst, smalltalk syntax is considered âalienâ to people used to >> algol-based languages. >> >> but we cannot do much more than we are trying to achieve in this area: >> make Pharo more compatible with âthe rest of the worldâ when it make sense, >> but strongly stay in our âalienessâ when it has sense (syntax, pureness, >> etc.). >> >> Esteban >> >> > >> > Thanks, >> > Bruno >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Parser-f >> ailure-on-FFI-pragmas-declaration-in-Pharo-5-tp4961737.html >> > Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >> > >> >> >> > -- Guille Polito Research Engineer French National Center for Scientific Research - *http://www.cnrs.fr* <http://www.cnrs.fr> *Web:* *http://guillep.github.io* <http://guillep.github.io> *Phone: *+33 06 52 70 66 13

Aug. 17, 2017