Build the squeak vm from scratch on Linux in one command

Laurent has written a script to build the squeak vm from scratch on Linux in one command. Real time saver.

Squeak 4.1 is released

Squeak 4.1 combines the license change occurring in the 4.0 release with
the development work that has been going on while the relicensing
process took place. Squeak now also includes the closure work and an improved UI.

Read more here.

Iliad 0.8 released

According to Nicolas the version 0.8 of the Iliad web framework is released. Read more.

Apple removes Scratch from iPhone

The discussion on the license change for Apple continues.
Meanwhile Scratch (which is written in Squeak Smalltalk)
was also removed.

Apple tries to keep complete control - I'm sure this wont work. Especially since there are alternatives like Android which offers more freedom.

Pharo 1.0 released

We finally made it ... Pharo 1.0 is released.

Just go and download it.

Future of Java

Oracle bought Sun, now they provide Sun server hardware and also "own" Java (and other technologies like MySQL, JavaFX, ...). I know that there is a JCP, but I think the driving force behind Java development is now Oracle.

Interesting that James Gosling (inventor of Java) now left Oracle.

Interesting times ...

Smalltalk 2009 conference videos

According to Andrés the videos from the Smalltalks 2009 conference are now available at the FAST website. Just click on Videos tab there.

Regex Chapter for PBE 2

There is a new draft chapter on Regular Expressions in Pharo available online.
This is intended for the planned "Pharo by Example 2" book.

Music by projection

Stéphane Rollandin created a screencasts demonstrating the muO system for
experimental musical composition which is based on Squeak 3.8. Read more here. A little bit weird ... since the screencast has no sound enabled, so you have to try it yourself.

Squeak as a DLL

Interesting: Ang BeePeng has Squeak running as a DLL. While that's possible in a few other Smalltalks (ST/MT, Smallscript, ...) it is new for Squeak. Let's see how it will be used.

International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies

If you have a paper, just send it in. Read more.

PrototypeWindow for Seaside

Hernan provided a seaside wrapper for the prototype window for Seaside:

see http://www.squeaksource.com/PrototypeWindow.html

for Details.

Smalltalk has some great opportunities

Interesting article ...

Smalltalk has some great opportunities

Interesting article ...

New french Smalltalk mailing-list

see http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2010-March/024069.html

Google Summer of code with Smalltalk

If you are a student and want to apply for the Google Summer Of Code with Smalltalk you should now visit the ESUG GSoC page.

Smalltalk User Group Switzerland

Looks like there is a new page for SMUG-S: the SMALLTALK USER GROUP SWITZERLAND

http://smug-s.ning.com/

Gofer Project Loader 1.0 (BETA)

Esteban announced the Gofer Project Loader 1.0 (BETA) - a simple
API to use Metacello loading.

There is a webpage explaining it.

Squeak 4.0

The Eagle Has Landed: Squeak 4.0 is Released

http://ftp.squeak.org/4.0/

The focus for 4.0 was to relicense Squeak with the MIT license (with
some Apple parts remaining under the Apache license.)

Smalltalk meetup in London 03/2010

Read more here

Smalltalk meetup in Cologne 03/2010

Get the details here: http://colstme.selfish.org/events/stammtisch02

New Pharocasts

New Pharocasts are available:

• How to build the VM on Linux
  
• How to contribute to Pharo
  

Trax for Squeak

Stephen Pair released Trax, a general object versioning system for Squeak.

Read more here.

Building a Pharo/Squeak VM on OSX

Hey ... and Adrian is using my metacello config for VMMaker too. He just described on how to build the virtual machine on OSX. Nice.

Building Squeak VM on Linux

Laurent wrote on how to build the Squeak VM on Linux. Nice that the VMMaker metacello configuration I created (see here and here) is used.

Google Summer of Code with Smalltalk

There is a new page for the Google summer of code with Smalltalk:

http://gsoc2010.esug.org/

You can read more about it here.

Next Pharo Sprint: March 13, 2010

The next pharo sprint:

Date: March 13, 2010
Time: 9:30 - 21:30
Place: Software Composition Group, University of Berne, Switzerland

See here for more details.

Chapter on Exceptions for Pharo by Example book

The http://pharobyexample.org book now includes a new chapter on Exception handling in Smalltalk.

The Moose Book

If you want to do software and data analysis then you should read the
new online book from Tudor Girba:

http://www.themoosebook.org/book

about the Moose technology. Moose is an analysis platform written in Smalltalk.

The (yet unfinished) book already includes descriptions on how to use Moose, how to build a browser with Glamour or how to load the latest Moose version into Pharo using Metacello.

One interesting aspect (beside a good documentation on Moose) is that this is now the second dynamic web book on Smalltalk technologies (after the Seaside online book) which is written using the Smalltalk based Pier Content Management System.

Squeak is twittering

The commits to Squeak trunk (the new community development model) are now also visible in Twitter:

http://twitter.com/SqueakTrunk

Should be easy to follow development now.

If you want to know about other package commits (SqueakSource) then
you could use the already known Planet Squeak code:

http://planetmisc.squeak.org

ScratchViewer for iPhone/iPad

John is building a scratch viewer for the iPhone and iPad.

Cologne Smalltalk Meetup Website

There is now a new website available for the Cologne Smalltalk Meetup.

Physical Etoys

Physical Etoys is a visual programming tool that connects the virtual world of computers with the real world in which we live in. Now a first beta version is released.

It is based on the Squeak Smalltalk system. The announcement is here.

Printed version of "Dynamic Web Development with Seaside"

Lukas announced the printed version of "Dynamic Web Development with Seaside".

Re-licensing Squeak

After years it is very close:

"The Squeak Oversight Board plans to finalize the multi-year effort of re-licensing Squeak. Squeak 4.0 is scheduled to be released on Monday, March 15th, 2010 and will be licensed under the MIT License [1] with some original parts remaining under the Apache License [2]."

Read more here ...

Seaside book

Lukas has a first copy of the Seaside book which is printed from the online version.

Hobbes for Pharo

Pavel announced "Hobbes for Pharo". Hobbes (Highly Objectified Blue Book Equivalent Smalltalk) is a virtual machine for the original Smalltalk-80 Version 2 by Xerox.

The Squeak/Pharo port is available now at SqueakSource:

http://www.squeaksource.com/Hobbes.html

Hobbes was first ported to Squeak by Dan Ingalls, later ported to VisualWorks by Vassili Bykov. There is an old version for Squeak available here.

You can see the VisualWorks version in action on a Simberon page.

Iliad webframework

The Iliad web framework for Smalltalk now has a new website online:

http://www.iliadproject.org

Monticello, Metacello ... Metaceller

Metacello is a nice package management system for Monticello in Pharo.
There are already various configurations for well known packages available in the MetacelloRepository project.

With a pharo image installed Metacello can be used to load a specific (or the latest) versions of Seaside:

  Gofer new
    squeaksource: 'MetacelloRepository';
    package: 'ConfigurationOfSeaside30';
    load.

 (Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfSeaside30) loadLatestVersion

Tudor Girba now created a basic version of a browser called "Metaceller" for managing Metacello configurations that are already loaded in the image. Read more here.

To load in Pharo evaluate:

 Gofer new 
        squeaksource: 'glamoroust'; 
        package: 'ConfigurationOfGlamoroust'; 
        load. 
 (Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfGlamoroust) perform: #loadDefault. 

After loading you can open the tool using:

 GTMetaceller open

Smalltalk meetup in Cologne

There is a Cologne Smalltalk User Meetup on 18th of February.
Read more here.

seasidehosting.st now with Pharo support

Adrian announced that the free Seaside hosting service seasidehosting.st now also supports Pharo (as well as any other closure aware Squeak images) since they updated the VM. Cool!

Seaside - PDF Book

Lukas announced a PDF version of the online Seaside book.

Pharo 1.0 Release Candidate 2 and image building

There is a new Pharo 1.0 RC2 (release candidate 2) image available. If you are on Windows you can also download the new setup. But there is much more going on in the Pharo community going on than just a new image.

The interesting stuff is that by using the Metacello packaging system one is able to load packages that are compatible with Pharo. Try the examples in the provided intro workspaces of RC2 and check out Dales blog for more metacello news.


After playing a little bit with it and cleaning up my projects I'am now able to load a Seaside sample application - here MetaSource with dependencies like FFI, Seaside 3.0, JQueryWidgetBox, ... just by providing a metacello configuration and evaluating a simple script:


Gofer new
squeaksource: 'MetaSource';
package: 'ConfigurationOfMetaSource';
load.

((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfMetaSource) project version: '1.0-alpha1') load


There is also a loader in preparation to ease this a little bit more. However - it is really easy now to build custom images like the one with MetaSource - a simple seaside application:

German Smalltalk evening in Munich

There is a german Smalltalker Meeting ("Smalltalk-Stammtisch") on
27.1.2010 in Munich. Just visit the Laab location in the evening. Entrance is free.

There will be a presentation from Thomas Stalzer on "Distributed Objectmodels". If you want to apply just send a short mail with your name to the organizer (Steffen.mueller AT VisKonz.de)

See also Joachims blog.

GemDev IDE - Smalltalk in Eclipse

GemDev is an experimental implementation of Eclipse-based IDE for GemStone Smalltalk.

See more here.

The IDE provides features like Smalltalk Browser, code editor or object inspector. Interesting.

Smalltalk the good parts

Douglas Putnam started a blog called http://smalltalkthegoodparts.com to record his Smalltalk explorations. He starts with a proof of concept for running Smalltalk on Slicehost.

"We believe that Smalltalk can give us a technological advantage in the coming Web 3.0. "


Pssst ... use Smalltalk as your secret weapon and dont tell any other! ;)

Porting from Java to Smalltalk/Seaside

Interesting

Maybe the Smalltalk community should provide tools to ease porting ;)

Squeak on Android

Andreas started to port Squeak to Android. Cool!

Seaside projects

There is some discussion about real world projects with Seaside. Beside well known sites like dabbledb.com or cmsbox.com there is also one available on a dutch insurance company. It's the embedded component on the right. If you look at the source code of the frame you will see that it is done in Seaside using VAST.

Pharo user mailinglist

Beside the "high traffic" regular developers list there is now also a pharo user mailinglist intended for questions of people using Pharo.

Pharocast - Write a blog with seaside

Write a simple blog application in Smalltalk - see the new Pharocast episode.

Pharo/Squeak and XML

If you want to work with XML in Pharo or Squeak you should have a
look at these two projects:

- XMLSupport
- Pastell

An example:


|stream doc|
stream := '<foo bar="1"/>' readStream.
doc := XMLDOMParser parseDocumentFrom: stream.
doc root @ #bar


returns 1

So XPath is built in Smalltalk ;)

Pharocasts

There is now a new weblog called "Pharocasts" with screencasts on Pharo development:

http://pharocasts.blogspot.com

First screencasts are on UI building, the blog was created by Laurent Laffont - if you have recorded screencasts you can send them to him.

Unicode and Smalltalk

Interesting idea about the use of unicode and Smalltalk from Michael.

Write interval expressions like "1 to: ∞" and others like using π ... mmmh have to think about it.

GUI with Pharo

Laurent Laffont provides a screencast how to build UI layouts programmatically with Pharo. You can also use the UI builder.

Hudson Build for Smalltalk

One thing I like in the Java world is the continuous integration support that I can get with free/open source CI servers like Continuum and Hudson especially in conjunction with Maven (which I use for builds to manage dependencies and version and that allows me switch between Java IDEs).

Even the Smalltalk world can profit from that existing work and knowledge: Yanni Chiu created a project "Hudson Build" allowing you automate a build through a shell script run by Hudson, and view the SUnit test results through Hudson. Lukas now uses this to build seaside and pharo smalltalk images and monitor the builds in his Hudson server.

Squeak on Nokia 900

New year, new devices. Here is a short story of Squeak running on the new Nokia 900.

Seaside XUL video

Pavel created a short demo video of Seaside XUL using Pharo.

XUL is the user interface markup language that Firefox and applications based on XULRunner use for the user interface.

As I already reported there are also old screenshots available.

Squeak DBX and Firebird

SqueakDBX now inludes support for the Firebird (former Interbase) database. Read more here. Now the project also uses Metacello Configurations ...

AVI on Trendly

Avi talks about how he implemented trendly.com

"Old Dude Who Knows Smalltalk" Shirts

One can buy the Smalltalker's T-shirt inspired by a blog post now from a T-shirt shop. Nice.

More Smalltalk Podcasts

Beside the Podcasts on VisualWorks (via James) there are also podcasts/videos from Marten on VisualAge available.

Cairo Graphics for Pharo - Rome port

Michael announced a Pharo port of "Rome" - a Cairo-backed graphics system. Read more.

Magma Browser

Hernán announced a new browser for the Magma OO-database. He also created a demo video which is available on youtube.

3D Curved Spaces in Smalltalk

Nikolay Suslov announced the first version of Collaborative Curved Space
Explorer SDK. It is based on Croquet and allows you to explore the structure of curved spaces in 3D.

You can read more about it on his blog.

Smalltalk Medicine Show

The Smalltalk Medicine Show is now available on Youtube. It includes videos on Squeak/Pharo Smalltalk, Seaside, iPhone Development with Smalltalk, ...

You should have a look.

Gofer and Git

Gofer is a small tool on top of Monticello that loads, updates, merges, diffs, reverts, commits, recompiles and unloads groups of Monticello packages. If you work with Pharo or Gemstone you may already know it.

Interesting that in the newest version you get git like behavior where you can pull published packages into the local cache. If you work offline you can later push your changes easily back into the repository. Read more here.

Pharo and Mars - iPhone development using Smalltalk

You want to use Pharo core images to develop iPhone applications?
So beside iSqueak have a look at Mars/Deimos.

Continuous Integration Server for Pharo

Continuous Integration is discussed on the Pharo list. One possible solution is to use Mason. You can download it here and read a short overview here.

"Mason is a very flexible system, it has infrastructure to build
images, build SAR archives, build documentation, load Monticello 1 and
2 packages, load Metacello configurations, run tests, run code critics
and execute arbitrary scripts, etc."

Intro to Gemstone

James Foster provides some introduction videos on Gemstone and Smalltalk.

Helvetia - embedding languages

You will find language extensions in any of the newer "mainstream" programming languages. Architectures like Java EE now rely heavily on features like annotations, JDK 7 may possibly also include closures.
You can embedd LINQ in C# 3.0 and so on ...

Creating Domain Specific Languages (DSL) is also getting more attention these days.

Since Smalltalk is defined in itself using objects and messages it was and still is easy to change and extend not only the system and tools but also the language itself.

Here Project HELVETIA is a new and lightweight approach to embed new languages into the host language. Even domain specific languages - demonstrated by a roman numeral example allowing you to easily write:

self assert: IV + I = 5

in an SUnit test.

Lukas provides an image you can play with and will talk about it on Smalltalk/Ruby BlockCamp in Paris.

A glimpse of Glamour

Nice overview from Tudor Girba on the Glamour browser framework.

Xtreams

Interesting presentation from Cincom's Martin Kobetic on a new stream implementation. I like the streaming with blocks...

Pharo twittering

There is a twitter account for the Pharo Smalltalk project now. Read more here.

Exceptions in Smalltalk - Book Chapter

There is a new chapter on exception handling available (from Stéphane).

It is intended for the second edition of the free book "Pharo by example".

More Seaside web applications

Another new application that is based on the Seaside web framework is http://www.ibizlog.com. It is based on Pharo.

"Shrink wrapped" product solutions with Pharo

Gary Chambers is the creator of the Polymorph project - a skinnable UI look currently supporting Watery, Vista, Old Squeak and Windows 2k look.
It is available for Squeak and the default for the Pharo image.

Gary (or GazzaGuru) works in a company called Pinesoft and he posted some new screenshots of their latest application built with Pharo. Read more here and here.

BTW: If you want to customize the Squeak VM for an own Smalltalk based product I've created a short howto which is (thanks to Andreas) now available on squeakvm.org

Scratch featured in “Communications of the ACM”

First a short story:

While travaling this summer I met two IT teachers in a german train discussing about an interesting piece of software their kids have found on the web. They wanted to use it in school since the kids love it. They complained that there was not enough time in school to check out interesting new things like this and that the regular german study plan contains only the boring stuff so kids mostly turn away from programming. To them it was a revolutionary approach and kids loved playing and working with this software (mostly after school). It was not a game - it was a software to build, explore and simulate ideas and share them using projects.

To my surprise they talked about Scratch and after a while I was part of the conversation. I explained that it was built using an open source software called Squeak in a programming language called Smalltalk, told that that there is more to discover and pointed them to www.squeak.org, the OpenCroquet 3D environment and the german squeak e.V. (an organisation to make Squeak also known in school). They definitely wanted to checkout all the websites I wrote down on a small piece of paper...

And now the news:

Meanwhile Scratch has more and more interest from people all over the world and is now also featured in an article in the “Communications of the ACM”. Squeak new knows more about this.

Image full of Smalltalk images

Back when I was a student I asked several Smalltalk vendors to provide a version of their Smalltalk to put on a CD so people could start learning it. The GSUG Smalltalk CD was born which we handed out on conferences. VisualAge was not included since it was too large for one CD.
Later this concept was used for an ESUG CD too.

Times and hard disk space have changed and now James reports that Marten Feldmann has put together a virtual box image with several Smalltalk versions. Go check it out.

Redline Smalltalk

SmalltalkJVM - another project to run Smalltalk on the Java VM is now called Redline Smalltalk. The project was created by James Ladd, you can read more here and watch the progress on twitter.

Event driven Squeak VM

Andreas is experimenting with an event driven Squeak VM prototype.

soek.goodies.st - Exploring Smalltalk source code

Ernest is playing with Seaside again and created a Smalltalk to navigate through documentation and source code. Read more here.

Squeak and Pharo Smalltalk on the iPhone

With the SqueakVM running on the iPhone you can now use both Squeak and Pharo to develop iPhone applications. If you want to know more about the Pharo path in iPhone development you should visit the Smalltalks 2009 conference, especially the talk about Deimos.

Squeak threaded VM

Eliot gives some details on the threaded Squeak VM he is working on and how it is inspired by David Simmons work. You may know David from Smallscript/S# - a very impressive system that unfortunately is not an active project anymore (as it once was) and never made it to the market.

Smalltalks 2009

Hernan invites to the Smalltalks 2009 conference.

Cairo graphics and Smalltalk

There is a new blog on Cairo and VisualWorks Smalltalk from Chris Thorgrimsson.

Smalltalk in the Netherlands

Found some pictures from the "Devnology Community day" from November 7th. Can you spot the pharo Smalltalk screenshot?

And it looks like Ernest is working on the cloud again.

Adriaan has some more news: http://a3aan.st/sunrise/learning+smalltalk+driving+a+tank

PDF creation in Smalltalk

Back in 2008 I created and published a Smalltalk binding for the
free Haru PDF library. With the package it is fairly easy to generate PDF documents from Squeak and Pharo.

The code is available at http://squeaksource.com/HPDF.html

It is also mentioned on the seaside website as one
alternative for Smalltalk PDF generation (beside others).

It looks like Georg's company now had the same idea to wrap
this library, they created a new product called PDFPrinter.
Looks like they have a deeper integration into the VisualWorks
printing system for their customers.

However - generating a PDF programatically is still a lot of work. What is still missing in Smalltalk is a counterpart to Java's JasperReport or BIRT with a more WYSIWYG editor like systems and PDF creation by mixing templates with data...

Smalltalk 2009 website

The Smalltalk 2009 conference website is up. Looks like it is driven by the Pier CMS (which is also written in Smalltalk using Seaside).

October Pharo Sprint

Damien Pollet has some photos of the Pharo Sprint in Lille, France (scroll down to the last two rows).

Let the objects flow

Adrian's PhD thesis on Object flow analysis was awarded with the Ernst Denert-Stiftung Prize. The paper is available online.
Congratulations!

Object Flow analysis is an approach to track how objects are passed through an OO system at runtime. It is discussed with the Smalltalk bytecode compiler as a case study.

Free Book - Pharo by Example

The new "Pharo by Example" book is now online:

http://pharobyexample.org

Metacello - new API

Dale has some news on the new Metacello API.

SqueakDBX 1.1

SqueakDBX 1.1 (an open source solution to access relational database) is out.

Mainly it consists of a plugin which will allow users to perform relational database operations through an open source library and a GLORP integration. It currently works on Squeak and Pharo and is now also ported to Dolphin.

Currently it hs support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQLite3 and MSSQL Server on Linux, Mac and Windows.

The official site is http://www.squeakdbx.org but due to a DNS problem it is currently only available at: http://squeakdbx.smallworks.com.ar

Metacello config for Seaside 3.0

Dale Henrichs is working hard on bringing Metacello to the masses.
There is now a Metacello config for Seaside 3.0 available.

Aconcagua & Chalten for Pharo

Aconcagua (a model for units, see docu) and Chalten (a model of the Gregorian Calendar, see docu) are now Pharo compatible.

Read more here.

Seaside 3.0alpha5

Julian announced Seaside 3.0 alpha5. According to the release notes now also issue 450 is fixed. ;)

JQuery WidgetBox for Seaside 3.0

Damien released a wrapper for a jQuery inplace editor and I followed with releasing the jquery widget box with wrappers for interesting jquery widgets like

• AlphanNumeric
  
• CheckTree
  
• DropShadow
  
• Splitter
  
• FishEye
  
• ...
  

You need Seaside 3.0 for that.

Free Book - Computer Programming using GNU Smalltalk

There is a new free book available from Canol Gökel called

"Computer Programming using GNU Smalltalk"

I really like the cover design.

Deploy Seaside applications to the world using Linux

A guide on how to deploy Seaside applications using Linux.

- Part 1 - Intro
- Part 2 - Install the VM
- Part 3 - Prepare the images
- Part 4 - Populate directories
- Part 5 - Configuring the webserver
- Part 6 - SeasideProxyTester

Thanks Miguel for sharing!