SmallHarbour project

With the support of ESUG there is a new ESUG SummerTalk 2011 project called SmallHarbour. It wants to provide a simple platform to host smalltalk web applications (similar to seasidehosting.st but also for commercial projects.

Read the announcement here and follow progress at www.smallharbour.org.

DabbleDB shuts down

The Dabble DB service shuts down on May 18, 2011
Time to rescue your data...

Moose Suite 4.4 is out

Tudor announced the new Moose Suite in version 4.4. Read more.

25 $ Computer

Remember the 100$ Laptop. Now there is a cheaper alternative: 25$/£15/17,5€ for a Computer.

Nautilus Preview

Nautilus is a new implementation of a Smalltalk browser for Pharo with support for groups, packages (using the new RPackage stuff from Pharo task force), declarative menus, ...

You try it in the latest update of Pharo core 1.3 image. Read here.

JQueryWidgetBox ported to VA

Looks like Sebastian Heidbrink ported the JQueryWidgetBox project for Seaside to VA Smalltalk and uploaded it to VASTGoodies.com.

I started the JQueryWidgetBox project in November 2009 and meanwhile various people contributed wrappers for seaside widgets to it.

Code is MIT, initially I thought about a different license model: everytime one uses the project in a production environment a new widget has to be contributed back to the project. ;)

There are so many good jquery plugins available that could be wrapped for seaside and make the web apps look much nicer. Feel free to help.

I hope that this new port will also help the project to grow...

Squeak forks

Pharo once forked from Squeak ... some people were happy, others angry. And there were IMHO unnecessary posts like this. However - Squeak is still alive and growing. As well as any of its forks.

Pharo and Squeak play nicely next to each other and both communities not only share history and virtual machine but also members and code/fixes.

Pharo took away the pressure from Squeak to be more like other Smalltalk IDEs. Squeak could continue to be the media and etoy Smalltalk. It's still the best environment to experiment with computing ideas.

And we can now use Pharo to introduce business people to (open source) Smalltalk as these two new indendent posts again prove: read here and here.

So IMHO I think it was a good step, especially since other forks like Cuis started to explorer new areas too. There are also other nice forks like the Squeak NOS project or the Croquet/OpenCobalt story with Krestianstvo and the new OpenQwaq. Cool!

I started with Squeak in version 1.0, right after Andreas created a VM port for Windows and helped to move it forward with code and words. Currently I concentrate on Pharo, otherwise I would be lost in all these nice projects. But I follow all the Squeak forks very closely.

It is really exciting to see all these different faces of Squeak and Smalltalk in general.

Squeak VM port to Google Native Client

Yoshiki Ohshima started a Squeak VM port to Google Native Client.
If you work with latest beta of Googles Chrome browser you can try it yourself.

Native client is a technology where native code (subset of Intel x86) could be run from a web browser within a sandbox.

PHANtom - aspect language for Pharo

A modern aspect language for Pharo was announced today.

DNU in JTalk

JTalk now handles #doesNotUnderstand:

OpenQwaq available

Teleplace today announced OpenQwaq, a major open source initiative for collaboration based on Squeak Smalltalk. To quote:


The OpenQwaq project is based on the commercial software that Teleplace has been delivering to the market over the past four years. It is a highly-secure, enterprise-class virtual collaboration platform that has been used by large commercial enterprises and federal agencies. The OpenQwaq project enables organizations - large and small, profit and not-for-profit - to implement virtual workspaces for their specific needs.

OpenQwaq is released under the GPL v2 license and is available for download immediately at http://code.google.com/p/openqwaq

Some more infos here and here.

Sacred ANSI standard

Follow Smalltalk ANSI standard ... or intuition. An interesting issue in the context of Pharo.

Morphic performance

Ben Coman has some nice posts on Morphic performance testing.

Squeakfest 2011

The 8th Annual Squeakfest will be held from May, 26 - May, 28 2011 at Universidad Católica in Montevideo, Uruguay. See

http://squeakfest.org

The theme for this year's conference will be "How and why to use Etoys in the education".

ConfigurationOfMagma for Pharo

If you want to work with the Magma OO-database in Pharo you should check out the updated ConfigurationOfMagma.

Scratch Day worldwide

May 21st 2011 is Scratch Day worldwide, see http://day.scratch.mit.edu

Scratch is is very nice very visual language in order to do animation and control also embedded systems. It is written in Squeak Smalltalk.

No time ...

Just read a blog post from Joachim on Checking of Runtime Dependencies. This article points to an article by Sebastian Kübeck which has interesting definition of the "I Don't have Time for That Developer". To quote:


I am sure you know those developers who respond to all suggestions for improving their situation with the same answer: "I don't have time for that". In the past, I called them hard-working developers and I even admired them a little for their patience with which they stumble over the same problems over and over again. In the meantime, I lost that admiration and I see those folks as what they really are: People that act like dogs who are busy chasing their own tails...


I think that is the reason why I like Smalltalk so much ... you can constantly improve your situation as a developer by improving anything within the system: starting from the language, the tools up to config management and deployment very easily.

SqueakSource3 Beta.1 "Easter Fire"

Tobias Pape announced SqueakSource3 Beta.1 called "Easter Fire" - a port of SqueakSource to Seaside 3 and Magritte 2. SqueakSource is a monticello code repository server which hosts your Smalltalk projects.

The SqueakSource3 code is based on the original SqueakSource source code which is used to run squeaksource.com

You can simply load it into Gemstone, Squeak or Pharo using the provided ConfigurationOfSqueakSource. You should load Seaside 3.0 first.

I tested it on latest Pharo 1.2.1:

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

((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfSeaside30) project latestVersion) load.

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

((Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfSqueakSource) project version: #easterFire) load.

Then start a new seaside adaptor (for instance comanche) using the seaside control panel (available from the world menu) and point your browser to http://localhost:8080/installSS

If you accept the default parameters there you should have a new instance running on http://localhost:8080/ss

Pharo web documentation tool

Camillo Bruni worked a bit on a pharo web documentation tool using Seaside. It's a derivate of ruby's yardoc.

You can download a test image and try it yourself.

Glamour chapter updated

The chapter on "Glamour" was updated in the Moose book. So if you want to use this framework to easily build browsers then go and have a look.

Smalltalk Hub

A first public demo for Smalltalk Hub is now available online, only use it for testing purposes. In the future this could be a nice replacement for Squeaksource.

Read the announcement.

It was written by ObjectFusion using the Iliad web framework and still a work in progress. The project is sponsored by ESUG.

Some of the features:
- works with Monticello files similar to squeaksource
- cool code browser and syntax highlighting for code
- includes issue tracking out of the box
- ...

But many things are missing:
- security
- ssh
- client-side scripting features
- ...

So far it is an alpha demo - although a very promising one.

Squeak for Android news

Dimitry Golubovsky has reached another milestone on the Squeak Port for Android Tablets. Read more in his announcement or on the test drive page.

Magma 1.2

Chris announced a new version of his Magma database. Magma 1.2 is running on Squeak 4.2, Pharo 1.1 and Pharo 1.2.

Test coverage with Hapao

A new screencast on test coverage with Pharo and Hapao. Nice!

The hapao website is here: http://hapao.dcc.uchile.cl:8090/pier

Seaside grows

Yet another website written in Seaside (together with GLASS). Nice!

Cuis 3.2. available

Juan released Cuis 3.2. with an enhanced Look and feel.
This integration should also make it easier for Squeak and
Pharo to integrate SimpleMorphic.

Seattle Smalltalk user group

There is a new Seattle Smalltalk user group.

Seaside Tutorial updated for 3.0

The Seaside Tutorial was updated for Seaside 3.0.

Smalltalk on Open JDK

Looks like there is a Smalltalk port running on Open JDK. Have to find out more.

Yesplan

At ESUG 2010 there was a presentation about Next Generation Event Planning in Seaside.

The product Yesplan - the event planning software written in Seaside by Inceptive.be now has a website: http://www.yesplan.be

Pharo 1.2.1. is out

We (the Pharo Project community) published another milestone - so Pharo 1.2.1. is out and available. The update number is #12345 (crazy number I know!)

You can get all the details about the release here. We have an impressive number of tests ( 7836 Unit-Tests for core, 10760 Tests for the Pharo 1.2 dev image), new tools and a new UI theme. And the system gets cleaner and cleaner!

If you want to try yourself:
- download the one click distribution (multiplatform, 26MB)
- download the image from the CI server
- or in case you are using Windows grab the installer that I just released (Win32, 13MB), including the fast CogVM

Short tip: you can easily load and run Seaside 3.0.31, the included developer workspace will tell you.

SmalltalkHub

SmalltalkHub a new project hosting application for Smalltalk and Monticello projects is going beta in a week. The project is sponsered by ESUG.

Today Nicolas published an early preview screenshot. Read more.

Metacello chapter updated

Stéphane updated the chapter on how to use Metacello package configuration system for Pharo. Click here for the PDF.

More on JTalk

Nicolas Petton talks about JTalk (a Smalltalk on top of JavaScript).

Car tracking in Smalltalk

Sven Van Caekenberghe reports about a new application "T3 Easy" (a track & trace product). It's an HTML5 web app (using client side HTML + Javascript + CSS) on top of a REST server written in Pharo Smalltalk. It consists of 4 stateless Pharo Cog VM's running behind an Apache load balancer.

The server uses Zinc HTTP Components, both for its server part, as well as for clients talking to other systems behind the scenes. Even the Open Street Map tile serving, which is pushing out many megabytes, is currently going through this server.

There is a live demo and a few classes are available as open source (IP to country mapping, ...)

April

Nice april fool: Oracle sues Starbucks over Java trademark. ;)

April Pharo Sprint in Brussels

Johan Brichau and Andy Kellens are organizing a Pharo sprint at Brussels Friday 15th of April. Get the details here.

Mariano is blogging too

Mariano Martinez Peck now also has a blog and starts with a journey through the Virtual machine.

Syntax Highlighting for Smalltalk

Smalltalk environments like Pharo include syntax highlighting as any other modern IDE. And if you want to write something about Smalltalk on the web you can use Daan van Berkels work to style your Smalltalk code via JavaScript.

Seaside REST

The Seaside REST interface got an update for better matches.

Doing REST in Seaside is simple - just use pragmas.

PocketCube Solver in Pharo

HwaJong Oh implemented a PocketCube Solver in Pharo.

Read his announcement here or watch a video here. Code is available on this squeaksource project.

DesignBlocks - Scratch in the webbrowser

I already reported about Scratch (which is written in Squeak Smalltalk). In this app you can use building blocks to form small scripts and provide interaction on the screen. Looks like this concept is now also ported over to JavaScript - check out the DesignBlocks beta site.

Morphic in JavaScript

Jens Möning ported Morphic (the UI framework used in Squeak and Pharo) over to JavaScript. It also runs nicely on the iPad as this videos proves.

You can try morphic.js in your webbrowser or read the programmers guide.

So beside the LivelyKernel from Dan that is the second morphic like environment in the web browser...

Another nice example that dynamic languages are on the rise. Especially with the new "canvas" tag JavaScript can be used more and more to reimplement existing or create new rich client applications. Have a look at CanvasPaint (a clone of MSPaint in JavaScript) and you know what I'm talking about.

Progress on VM side ...

New Cog VM version from Eliot.

The Cog virtual machine for Pharo and Squeak now also has a project home at http://code.google.com/p/cog/.

And Igor is working on automated hudson builds for the VM (see docu and first results).

SqueakNOS Update released

A new update on SqueakNOS is released. Nice!

SqueakDBX 1.3 and DBXTalk

SqueakDBX 1.3 is released. This is the last release with this name.
In the future the project is called DBXTalk.

Pharo at Universities

Esteban now started teaching Pharo at San Martin University Buenos Aires Province.

JTalk and JSTalk

When I first heard about JTalk (Smalltalk on JavaScript in a browser) I immediately thought about using it to run a Smalltalk not only on JavaScript but also on the java virtual machine (by using JavaScript as a vehicle and Rhino from Mozilla as the engine to run it).

I played with Rhino in the past ... it's a simple JAR you can use to integrate JavaScript into Java applications and since JTalk is only a few kB in size it should be easy to bootstrap a Smalltalk on top of JavaScript on top of Rhino on top of JVM ...

Performance would be bad ... but it would be fun.

Looks like Thiago Silva already had a similar idea - not really like a Smalltalk, but with similar tools like Smalltalk (like class browser) to ease JavaScript development. This one is called JSTalk (hence the additional name) and can be found here.

Use Smalltalk for the next startup

Did I mention that Diego Lont and Stephan Eggermont participated in Startup Weekend Eindhoven. The combination of Seaside on Pharo made it possible they were honored by the jury with the innovation price (Most Innovative Business Case).

Read more here.

So you should really think about using Smalltalk for your next startup!

Life on Mars

Yes there is still life on Mars (project).

Riak Interface for Pharo Smalltalk

Runar Jordahl implemented a Riak Interface for Pharo Smalltalk. Why is this interesting, you may ask.

Riak is a scalable database (written in Erlang, C and a little bit of JavaScript) that is being used in production by companies like Mozilla and Comcast. It is based on Amazons Dynamo using key-value storage (bucket-keys to be exact). It has peer-to-peer replication without a specific master - this allows for a fault-tolerant system.

Runars Interface runs in Pharo 1.1., uses the ZincHTTP components and is currently in beta. Check out the included test case "EpigentRiakRestConnectionTest" to see how easy you can use it.
You have to set up a riak running at "http://riaktest:8098/riak" if you want to try.

I hope to find the time to play with this a little bit more.

SandCastle Themes for Pharo 1.2

Patrick Barroca announced two additional themes for Pharo 1.2. You can download them from Squeaksource.

 

JTalk - Smalltalk on JavaScript

Jtalk is an implementation of the Smalltalk language that runs on top of the JavaScript runtime. It was announced today by Nicolas Petton.

Some features:
- it is written in itself (including the parser/compiler)
- it is self-contained
- it compiles into efficient JS code
- it uses the Squeak chunk format
- Pharo is considered as the reference implementation

SqueakNOS updates

Looks like Squeak NOS (No operating system) will soon get an update. One of the coolest project I've seen ... booting a Smalltalk system without an operating system. Have to try out as soon as it is available.

Pharo Core 1.1.2 release and Pharo Core 1.2 in preparation

Pharo Core 1.1.2 is released. This is 1.1. with additional fixes.

So Pharo 1.2 is the new stable and a prebuilt final can be loaded here. Please test and give feedback.

Pinguy OS

Nice distro: http://pinguy-os.sourceforge.net/

Java 7

With the introduction of a few "simplifications" in Java 7 I expected exactly this kind of discussion when I first heard about the new diamond operator. Java may end up as a degenerated C++ variant...

So why not switch to something much simpler right from the beginning and care about real world problems.

Tron inspired by Smalltalk?

Do you know Tron - the movie. Sure. But how is this related to Smalltalk?

The script was written by Bonnie MacBird and according to this page her script for Tron is loosely based on the work of her spouse Alan Kay (Dynabook, Smalltalk, Vivarium). Didnt know that until today...

Smalltalk on AVM2

Alchemy is a research project from Adobe that allows users to compile C and C++ code that is targeted to run on the open source ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2).

Interesting enough Alexandre Jasmin is working compiling the Squeak VM with Adobe Alchemy - this would allow Smalltalk to run on the Flash VM. Interesting ...

Here are some more notes on this.

Seaside 3.0.4

After Dale finished the metacello configuration the new "Seaside 3.0.4" is ready now.

SqueakDBX news

SqueakDBX is a nice interface for accessing relation databases from Smalltalk. It is now once again supported by ESUG. Next steps will be an updated name (since it also works for other Squeak forks like Pharo) and an updated Glorp version (OO to RDBMS mapping layer).

Panu Suominen now also announced a project for simple object pooling that you can use to pool database connections for SqueakDBX.

Cuis 3.1 is available

Cuis 3.1. is available from Juan. It is faster regarding UI performance and has support for MCZ files (Monticello).

Juan also made a small 2MB image available that is based on Cuis 3.1.

SIXX updated

SIXX (Smalltalk Instance eXchange in XML) was updated to work on Pharo 1.2 and Squeak 4.2. SIXX allows you to exchange nets of Smalltalk objects between various Smalltalks.

Birth of a Smalltalk image

A Smalltalk image is a file where all the objects are persisted (similar to an OO-database). You can at any point in time save the state of your object world to continue later - for instance continue debugging a problem the next day. The image concept is often confusing for people who are used to building a program by compiling source files to a binary.

An image is typically maintained over years - and it is possible that some of the objects within a smalltalk image live there since Smalltalk-80.

An image can grow in size over time and sometimes one starts to load code/objects into a smaller one to create a new clean image file for daily work.

At Pharo-Project we currently have a PharoCore image that is cleaned up day by day and that is used to build the Pharo-dev ("Pharo") Smalltalk distribution. Pavel also worked on a much smaller kernel (Pharo Kernel project) by throwing out more classes. I already reported about his work.

However - all these were built by stripping an existing image.

Benjamin (with the help of Igor) now created a new Smalltalk kernel ("Hazel") based on Pharo. The new born weight 2.2Mb and includes 230 classes. It is just beeping to prove that the image is living. Read about it here. Congratulations to the new born ...

Combined with more VM support in the future this will allow for small kernel images that provide textual interactivity (replace your bash with Smalltalk scripts, ...) or small webserver images, etc.

Due to the reduced size these images have less tool support (no IDE as you will find in any typical Smalltalk image) - so it will become important to reactivate the InterpreterSimulator project. With this small tool you can run a Smalltalk image within a Smalltalk image and trace the processing. Pavel already started to work on this. Interesting ...

Multi Avatar Cobalt

Lawson shares a picture of a multi avatar cobalt.

German Smalltalk Podcast

There is a new german Smalltalk podcast online:

http://smalltalkinspect.podspot.de

Joachim, Marten and Sebastian talk about Smalltalk versions and events.

Best Creative Hack Of The Year

The Squeak VM had problems on Linux caused by using UUID's. It was not a Smalltalk or VM problem - but a bug that exists in some versions of libuuid on some Linux distributions. This bug was really annoying since from time to time someone complained about it (either on Squeak or Pharo lists).

This was now finally fixed by Levente Uzoni and he is now honored with the "Best Creative Hack Of The Year" award by the vm-developers. Thanks Levente!

CloudforkSSO – OpenID and OAuth support for Smalltalk With the Cloudfork

With the CloudforkSSO library you can let the users of your Seaside web application login using their Google or Yahoo accounts. Cool!

Seaside 3.0 for Gemstone

James Foster updated the Seaside 3 Tutorial for Gemstone.

Squeak 4.2

Squeak 4.2 is released.

IWST @ ESUG 2011

There is a call for papers on the IWST @ ESUG 2011 (International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies in Edinburgh, Scotland). Read more.

Another Pharo success story

There is a new large Argentinian application based on Pharo. Read more here.

Aida 6.2

Janko announced the Aida Web Framework Spring edition

JNIPort 2.0 for VisualWorks, Pharo and Squeak

JNIPort is a Smalltalk library which allows Java code to be invoked from
Smalltalk. It acts as a bridge between the world of Smalltalk objects and a
Java Virtual Machine (JVM) where Java code is executing.

Good news for the version 2.0: JNIPort can now be used in Pharo and Squeak.
Read more.

Origins of the Collection protocol

Funny (hi)story on the Smalltalk collection protocol!

Smalltalk Beer-trinking event

Smalltalk Stammtisch Zürich Februar: 09.02. Read more

More Pharo shortcuts

It's hard to remember long URL's. At least for me.
But with these new shortcuts remembering important pharo-project sites is now easy:

http://issues.pharo-project.org
http://ci.pharo-project.org
http://book.pharo-project.org
http://wiki.pharo-project.org

Thanks Adrian!

And thanks to Geert we now also have:
http://build.pharo.world.st
http://code.world.st

Nice shortcut

pharo.st

Seaside at FOSSDEM

Stephan Eggermont and Willem van den Ende will demo Seaside at the FOSDEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium to free and Open Source developers. Read more here and the official site.

Seaside AJP Adaptor updated

Phillipe updated the AJP adaptor for Seaside. So if you already run Apache in front of your Seaside image feel free to update.

Headless support in Pharo

Pharo gets more support for running headless (without a UI).

SSL for Seaside

I already reported about using SSL for Seaside with SqueakSSL. Now I found a nice HOWTO on Andreas blog. Will try out as soon as time permits.

TestMock for Pharo

The TestMock project was updated and is now available for Pharo 1.1.1.

Hapao Testing for Pharo

Hapao is an innovative test coverage tool for Pharo. Read more.

Coral - Scripting for Pharo

Small introduction to Coral - so you can use Pharo for scripting. Read more.

Smalltalk and table-based hand gesture tracker

Nikolay plays with objects in Croquet island by using a table-based hand gesture tracker. Done in Smalltalk (what else). Time to buy a Multi-touch table and throw the PC keyboard away ;)

Some more automated Seaside testing

Tony has posted some more infos on how he tests his Seaside app using
Soup and ZinkHTTPComponents.


"I found that if I write the tests at the same time as I code the forms, this all goes pretty fast. The advantage is that instead of using the browser for minutes to manually test the few things that I think I might have affected, I can run a whole regression suite in a few seconds."

Yes, Smalltalk makes this possible and the interesting part is that you can even do this in an XPStyle (write the test first and then create the #renderXX: methods for the seaside components).

CampSmalltalk wiki

Instantiantions has set up a new CampSmalltalk wiki. Joachim knows more.

The old wiki is not available anymore (since around 2007), but fortunately there is a way back machine archive.

So one can even find the first CampSmalltalk pictures from 2000 in San Diego (my first US visit)

JUnit removed from NetBeans?

Looks like Oracles lawyers check the license of NetBeans code. It may be possible that JUnit is removed from the standard Netbeans installation if it doesnt change its license.

Another crazy story of lawyers and software.

Kent Beck already responded and a former Sun employee suggested to keep the current license model to "keep Oracle's aggressiveness in check". Interesting times ...

Kinect and EToys

Beside Scratch there is now also an interface to Kinect for Etoys in Squeak:

http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira

Cool!

Pharo 1.3 started

Pharo 1.2 (on top of the already read 1.2 core) is nearly finished. Time to already start a 1.3 core.

Xtreams up to date

Martin provides an up to date port of Xtreams for Pharo/Squeak. It now matches the docs and VW version better.

Virtual environment creation for Gemstone/Seaside

Vagrant is a tool for building and distributing virtualized development environments. It helps you automate virtual machine creation using Oracle’s VirtualBox (which I use to manage my virtual computers)

There is now a new tutorial from John Thornton available that will setup a Vagrant VM and install GemStone and SeaSide 3.0 on it. Read more.

Nice!

Connecting Scratch with Kinect

Kinect is a great add-on for the XBox 360. New hardware to connect to your Smalltalk system ...

Stephen Howell shows how he connects Kinect to the Scratch application (which is written in Squeak Smalltalk):

- video
- blog

Pharo and Amazon S3

Sven announced an Amazon AWS S3 Client written in Pharo Smalltalk. Read more here.

Custom Windows styles in CLFramework for Pharo

Gerard (aka nullPointer) now finally I implemented the posibility of create a custom windows in CLFramework (a UI builder framework for Pharo)

• Video 1
  
• Video 2
  
• Video 3
  

Cool!

Hotswap

Year 2011 B.C. and Java is still fighting with hotswap. Why not choose Smalltalk ;)

GetItMade.com - Seaside and JQuery widget boxes getting live

Nick Ager is one of the contributors to the JQueryWidgetBox project for Seaside. I created the widget box project back in October 2009 to bring more interactive web applications by wrapping jquery widgets in Smalltalk code and using them in seaside applications.

Looks like in 2010 Nick also developed a new site using Seaside and the widget box:

http://www.getitmade.com

getitmade was founded by Rob Dobson and Nick Ager to satiate their frustration at the difficulty of getting stuff made.

Nice to see the stuff actually in production use! Really cool.

Seaside in the cloud - a free EC2 micro instance

Amazon has a new offer of a free micro instance for a year. Nice.

Nick provides a video on how to deploy your Seaside application for free with an EC2 micro instance and Gemstone. Here are the detailed instructions.

Smalltalk and Music

The Cyclades project, a project led by a team of researchers and composers from the Geneva University of Music (Hes-So) in partnership with Pharo's developers.

The purpose of their research is to conceive and create ways of representing several different elements of the structure or texture of music by using any kind of rendering computers can provide. Code and programs will be implemented in Pharo. Nice!

They also provide a one click image.