Planet Smalltalk

June 30, 2009

Howard Stearns - When worlds collide

Interesting juxtaposition between these two from overnight:A Rocketboom syndicated TV-babe declares our virtual worlds as one of three reasons for her to go to California(!) among the far-from-product stuff at Intel Research Day.Appalachian State ...

Göran Krampe - "Hacking On DeltaStreams"-Guide For Suicidal Meta Squeakers

This instruction is for getting started HACKING on the DeltaStreams package for Squeak. If you are into meta programming, advanced source code management and Squeak, it might be interesting. Thus it is not an instruction for users (it is not usable anyway) nor for Squeak beginners.

Step 1

Grab an image, I use 3.10.2-7179. It might be nice if you picked some other important target for DS, like say Croquet or Pharo. :)

Step 2

Install base image fixes for DeltaStreams (maintained as a CS for now), pick the one suitable:

        http://map.squeak.org/packagebyname/deltastreamfixes

Step 3

Add repos for DeltaStreams/Tirade/SystemEditor on SqueakSource and open them:

        MCHttpRepository
        location: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/DeltaStreams'
        user: ''
        password: ''

Step 4

Load the latest of ONLY the following packages from those repos:

        SystemEditor-Core
        SystemEditor-Squeak
        SystemEditor-Traits
        SystemEditor-Tests
        SystemEditorBrowser
        Tirade
        InterleavedChangeSet
        DeltaStreams-Model
        DeltaStreams-Logging
        DeltaStreams-Storing
        DeltaStreams-Tirade
        DeltaStreams-Tests
        DeltaStreams-Deprecated
        DeltaStreams-UI

NOTE: The DeltaStreams-Logging package is from Matthew, not sure of its status. DeltaStreams-Storing is meant to contain the parts needed for DS to use InterleavedChangeSet - which is the funky changeset-compatible format Matthew invented. I am not pursuing that format but I see no harm in keeping it. It might be a good idea too - I am not sure. DeltaStreams-Tirade is the reader/writer support for the Tirade format which is the preferred format for Deltas from now on. All tests are in DeltaStreams-Tests, there is a UI too but Matthew wrote it and I am unsure of its operational status. The DeltaStreams-Deprecated is a big pile of stuff that should in the end just be dumped. Consider it to be "candidates for death". :)

Eventually we would typically only really need (no ICS, no tests, no SE browser, no deprecated):

        SystemEditor-Core
        SystemEditor-Squeak
        SystemEditor-Traits
        Tirade
        DeltaStreams-Model
        DeltaStreams-Logging
        DeltaStreams-Tirade
        DeltaStreams-UI

Step 5

Run some tests. Currently there are tons of tests failing. I do not like this "state" so I am in the process of cleaning up, fixing what I can fix and possibly even throwing out red tests I can’t understand. We should always be all green, otherwise we don’t know if we broke something. These are the results in my image:

        SystemChangeNotifications-Tests: 1 error (it is a trivial fix I missed, will go away)
        Tirade-Tests: green
        SystemEditor-Tests: 11 failures of 181  (not sure why...)
        DSDeltaApplyTest: green
        DSDeltaLoggingTest: green
        DSDeltaCreationTest: green
        DSDeltaClassifyTest: green
        DSDeltaAntiTest: green
        DSDeltaCopyTest: green
        DSDeltaFileOutTest: 2 errors (Matthew has commented them, I am not pursuing ICS)
        DSDeltaRevertTest: 19 passes, 6 failures (these we should be able to fix!)
        DSDeltaTiradeTest: green

        DSDeltaChangeSetTest: red, red, red!!! (this is testing the ChangeSet "lookalike" ICS aspect, I am not pursuing ICS so will not fix now)
        DSDeltaTiradeFileOutTest: red, red, red!!! (these I will fix!)

        DSDeltaValidationTest: red, red, red!!! (I need to read up on validation first)
        DSDeltaValidationTestSystemEditor: red, red, red!!! (same here)

NOTE: The Validation tests… I am unsure of, I have not looked at the design and I am unsure if I have broken them or if they were indeed broken. We should take an image and install the DS release from SM and see the test status there.

Step 6

Read some class comments and code. Start with DSDelta and the DSChange hierarchy.

Step 7

Pray. Ask me.

regards, Göran

JR's Smalltalk Daily - Smalltalk Daily 6/30/09: Intro to Web Velocity

A basic overview of Web Velocity

Andres Valloud - A quote...

"Retirement is a sick thing. When you give up your life to sit around and grow old... I don't see that." --- Buddy Rich

June 29, 2009

Julian Fitzell - Web Velocity released

Big news from Cincom on the Seaside mailing list today: they've made an evaluation version of their commercial Seaside-based Web Velocity environment available for download. In case you've missed the buzz, Web Velocity takes Seaside running in VisualWorks Smalltalk, adds ActiveRecord integration and a web-based development environment (written in Seaside, of course). If you're curious, head over and download a copy.

The Weekly Squeak - ESUG Innovation Technology Awards – Time is running out!


esug-logo

The Innovation Technology Awards session is one of the real highlights of the annual International Smalltalk Conference organised by ESUG each year.

Noury Bouraqadi has just posted to remind everyone that you only have until 1st July to nominate your work for an award. Put together a brief description of your work, which can be in any Smalltalk dialect, make it available for inspection online, and be prepared to demonstrate it to a constant stream of inquisitive Smalltalkers during the conference, and you could win up to €500 in addition to the recognition and respect of your peers.

Have a look at Noury’s site for an introduction to the ideas that have proved popular in the past, or our own details of last year’s winners.

All the administrative details can be found on the ESUG 2009 website – so get those application forms in now!

And in case you’ve forgotten, this year’s conference is in Brest, France from 31 August—4 September, 2009. It will be preceded by Camp Smalltalk running on the weekend of 29—30 August 2009, and incorporates the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies on 31 August.

Andres Valloud - Open mouth, insert foot, chew

I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people. --- Dan Quayle

(source)

But, apparently, that's just a joke that was taken out of context. Here you can see allegedly actual Quayle quotes, such as:

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

For NASA, space is still a priority.

The future will be better tomorrow.

James Foster - Yet Another Smalltalk Tutorial at OOPSLA


I’m pleased to report that this year’s OOPSLA will include several tutorials with a Smalltalk theme. On Thursday afternoon (tentative schedule) I’ll be sharing “Can you be Rich and Thin? Building Dynamic Web Applications with Seaside.”

Is there a inherent contradiction between a rich client/server application and a thin client? Can a web application provide the control flow that we have come to expect from good desktop applications? Why is it that so many otherwise professionally-developed web sites (including on-line banking, travel reservations, and even the OOPSLA submission system) include warnings like, “Do not save, print or reload this page!” or “Do not use your browser’s <Back> button!”? Has the web really set programming back to the era of GOTO? Is a basic subroutine call too much to ask from your web framework? Why is it that popular web frameworks devote so much to handling object-relational mapping?

While other web frameworks are evolutionary, Seaside has been characterized as revolutionary, even heretical. What makes Seaside different? Is it the funny URLs? Is it continuations? Is it the ability to create reusable domain-specific components? All of the above?

This hands-on tutorial will present Seaside (a free, open source, web framework) and walk through the process of building a pure-objects application (UI to database) using Squeak and GLASS (GemStone, Linux, Apache, Seaside, and Smalltalk). You may bring your own computer or team up with someone else who brought one.

Mark you calendars for October 25-29, 2009.

GNU Smalltalk Blogs - GtkLauncher is dead long live VisualGST

Hi,

I am working on the debugger for VisualGST :


imagik.fr

Now you can step, step into, run and inspect the stack.

http://visualgst.bioskop.fr/

Cheers

JR's Smalltalk Daily - Smalltalk Daily 6/29/09: Miscellaneous Browser Features

A look at some pieces of Smalltalk code browser functionality that you may not be aware of

Joachim Tuchel - VA Smalltalk 8 Tabbed Browsers - what I’d like to see improved

One of the new features of VA Smalltalk are the Tabbed Browsers, mostly a visual visual redo of teh Tabbed Browsers. I like the new look of the Browsers and find most of the new look nicer as well as an improvement in usability. The Browsers look much better now and make navigating the System much [...]

Howard Stearns - What's New?

People are often pretty good at walking into a room they are familiar with, and instantly knowing what has changed. That's pretty useful for 3D operations team rooms. But what if things have been “redecorated” — moved around for...

James Robertson - [Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants] Everything is Back Now

All the normal website services are back online now.

June 28, 2009

James Robertson - [Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants] Mostly Back

It looks like the outage is over - the only thing that's still offline right now is the NC download page. That should be back up shortly though.

James Robertson - [Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants] Planned Outage

Sometime between 4:30 pm (EDT) and 9 PM, this website (and other Cincom websites) will be down. There's some electrical maintenance work going on at corporate HQ that requires the shut off, but it should be brief.