Squeak-dev October 2010

squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

79 participants
264 discussions

Start a nNew thread

Book - A Mentoring Course on Smalltalk
by recursive68＠gmail.com 09 Dec '10

09 Dec '10

Thinking of buy this book, anybody read it ? Is it a basic st book or more advanced and is it any good ? TIA Jon

4 4

Re: [squeak-dev] refactoring browser in Squeak?
by Tim Felgentreff 04 Dec '10

04 Dec '10

Hello There are currently two packages in the inbox (Kernel-topa.508, Compiler-tfel.175) which enable AST, Refactoring-*, VB-Regex and the useful OB packages (Standard, Core, Morphic, Regex, Refactory, Shout) to load in trunk. Attached you will find a ChangeSet that, if applied after loading all of the packages, fixes all but 12 failures and 1 error in the aforementioned packages' tests. Regards Tim On Oct 25, 2010, at 5:58 PM, Lawson English wrote: > On 10/25/10 8:38 AM, Tim Felgentreff wrote: >> We're currently compiling a set of changes that will allow OB and Refactory to work again in their latest respective versions. I'll test them and put them up on the ML/Inbox later today. >> >> I talked with Lukas today about a possible OB-SqueakCompat package, what would the community think about that? >> >> Regards >> Tim >> > I don't know if you saw my recent comment about the browser behavior. In Squeak 4.1 the version of OmniBrowser loaded by this script: > > Installer squeaksource >> project: 'MetacelloRepository'; >> install: 'ConfigurationOfOmniBrowser'. >> (Smalltalk at: #ConfigurationOfOmniBrowser) project lastVersion load: #( Dev ). > > > works differently when PRDistribution or subclasses of PRDistribtion are highlighted. > > Like as not, its part of other issues you are already working on, but just in case it's not... > > > Lawson > > >

7 22

quick handling of graphics files
by Ross Boylan 01 Dec '10

01 Dec '10

I have PNG files with document scans, and would like to view them as part of an application. I will also need to scale and/or pan them. One file took over a minute to open when I selected "open graphic in window" from the file browser. (ImageReadWriter formFromFileNamed: 'myfile.png') asMorph openInHand had about the same speed. I'm looking for advice on how to speed that up, or the information that is not possible. I found a similar question on the newbie list, but no one answered it. I'm guessing that it is the initial read and translation of the file that's taking the time, since resizing the image is much faster than loading it. This is really too slow to be practical, and much slower than imagemagick's display command, which opens in under 5 seconds. The image is a 400dpi black and white scan of an 8.5x11" page; the file is 144k bytes. BTW is there any particular reason the file browser opens a SketchMorph while asMorph on the ImageReadWrite result produces an ImageMorph? The former is closer to what I want since it is resizeable and not transluscent; on the other hand, the comment in SketchMorph says they are produced by the PaintBox, which is not true in this case. Squeak 3.10.2 on Linux with 32 bit color in X. I think squeak is using 32 bit color as well, but couldn't find the setting on a quick look (not in preferences browser).

11 24

OSX squeak crash: maximal size of image?
by Michal 21 Nov '10

21 Nov '10

My image has grown to 480MB and needs to grow still at least to the double of that (using squeak for research on language, involving huge language samples). I am now starting to get low-space notifiers, and squeak crashing into thin air. I am on OSX with 4G RAM, squakVM 4.2.4b1, squeak 4.2b -- is there a hard limit on the size of the image? Is there a way for me to get beyond that limit? thanks, Michal

3 4

building Cog / FFiPrims plgin on windows
by Alain_Rastoul 05 Nov '10

05 Nov '10

Hi I downloaded the Cog trunk , the last FFI version from Monticello, used the workspace script to generate the source and build Cog on Windows with cygwin (gcc 4.5.1). Every thing is ok, but the FFI plugin doesn't work. When I evaluate Win32Window class>>coloredEllipses I have SmallInteger(Object)>>doesNotUnderstand: #getHDCDuring: Win32Window getFocus evaluates to a integer handle, not a Win32Window. I did (Smalltalk at: #ExternalType) initialize. (Smalltalk at: #ExternalStructure) compileAllFields. and also tryed to build only the plugin with Mingw gcc 2.95.2 but I have allways the same problem Is the FFI plugin functional ? am I missing something ? What version of gcc is ok ? (the make CC=gcc-3 LD=gcc-3 DLLWRAP='dllwrap -mno-cygwin --driver-name gcc-3' doesn't work) Thanks, Regards, Alain

4 19

Squeak hang at full cpu - help
by Alain_Rastoul 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

Hi Everybody, I have a standard squeak 4.1 with seaside 3.0 preloaded under Windows XP (seaside 3.0 rc OneClick Image) with FFI, ODBC packages installed and a very memory intensive application who load data from a MSSQL server and hash it into dictionaries. It is running in a process started at systemBackgroundPriority, and is launched with a MessageTally spyAllOn:. After running a few minutes it hangs up at full CPU, and I can't see what is going on, everything is hung (no Ctrl., no mouse) When I open the debug console and dump processes I see only few processes (MessageTally>spyEvery:on:, handleTimerEvent, userInterruptWatcher, lowSpaceWatcher) but no UI process and no app process. I tryed to put halts in code but it doesn't change anything. I noticed that it occurs when the memory usage is about 99% (I see it with a MemoryUsageMorph ticking), but not allways at the same time, it can load 10k, 20k or 30k rows before hanging. If I remove the MessageTally, it ran several times without hanging. I don't see any direct relation between MessageTally and hanging the VM (allocations / GC ?) I will try to generate and compile the vm with MSVC if I can (I can't test my app under linux) What is the way go with this kind of problem ? Any help, tip for debugging, advice, idea, remark (...) are welcome. Thanks in advance Regards, Alain

3 6

How weak finalization affects the performance
by Igor Stasenko 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

Here the idea, which came to Chris, put a delay into #finalizationProcess loop: finalizationProcess [true] whileTrue: [ WeakFinalizationList initTestPair. FinalizationSemaphore wait. FinalizationLock critical: [ WeakFinalizationList checkTestPair. FinalizationDependents do: [:weakDependent | weakDependent ifNotNil: [weakDependent finalizeValues]]] ifError: [:msg :rcvr | rcvr error: msg]. 5 seconds asDelay wait. ]. And here a simple benchmark, which triggers GC often: [ Array new: 100 ] bench without delay: '2,450,000 per second.' '2,490,000 per second.' '2,490,000 per second.' '2,480,000 per second.' '2,530,000 per second.' with delay: '2,670,000 per second.' '2,680,000 per second.' '2,690,000 per second.' '2,730,000 per second.' roughly about ~8% faster :) But now lets put something big into weak array: | dict b | dict := WeakKeyDictionary new addAll: (( 1 to: 1000 ) collect: [:i | i->i] ); yourself. WeakArray addWeakDependent: dict. b := [ Array new: 100 ] bench. WeakArray removeWeakDependent: dict. b without delay: '1,840,000 per second.' '2,060,000 per second.' '2,130,000 per second.' with delay: '3,030,000 per second.' '2,880,000 per second.' '2,890,000 per second.' Do not forget to do: WeakArray restartFinalizationProcess when you changing the #finalizationProcess method, otherwise you won't see real numbers. So, i like the idea of putting delay there. Finalization is eventual, and there is no hard guarantees that it will happen in micro-second just after some object become garbage. So, be it 5 seconds or 1000 seconds not really matters. What is matters that with delay we win much more, by avoiding wasting time in finalization process too often. -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

6 12

Looking for real-world Magma application
by Igor Stasenko 04 Nov '10

04 Nov '10

Hello all, sorry for cross-posting. :) I'd like to ask you, if anyone could share either an image or installation with application, which using Magma OODB. I'd like to use it & test how changing different aspects of Magma internals could affect the performance. There's many tricks, which is known by Chris how to speed it up by cleverly fine-tuning various Magma options, like read strategy etc. But what i'd like is to see, is some setup, used by people, and by taking it, see how it could make run faster, without changing an application code. I remember, someone gave a talk @ ESUG, that they were using Magma for their application, but then forced to switch to another DB layer, because they had bad performance issues. It would be good, if you could give me the code, so i can run it and see if things could be improved. Its not a problem, if code is not open-source, we could sign an NDA, if this is necessary. I need something real, simply because benchmarks sometimes not representative. :) -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

5 11

To a terabyte and... beyond
by Dan Ingalls 03 Nov '10

03 Nov '10

Hi Guys ;-) Anyone have experience with running super huge Squeaks? I have the chance to use an absurdly big machine. I'd appreciate advice (offline unless you think it would be generally useful) regarding the relative stability of, say, linux and windoze builds of 64-bit Squeaks known (or thought) to run with over a terabyte of objects, and also where there may be some pre-built 64-bit images (sorry if this is in an obvious place). Finally (since I've mainly used a Mac for Squeak) I guess I'll have to know how to tell it how big to be, or would it grow gracefully if I just said "(String new: 1000000000000) size" in a normal image? Thanks - Dan

5 5

New Trunk Image: 10548
by Casey Ransberger 03 Nov '10

03 Nov '10

Grab it here: http://ftp.squeak.org/trunk/Squeak4.2-10548-alpha.zip 2805 run, 2767 passes, 9 expected failures, 28 failures, 1 errors, 0 unexpected passes Mac OS X 10.6.4 (Squeak4.2.5beta1U) The error is in WeakFinalizersTest>>#testNewFinalizationSupported, which it would seem is not too big of a deal (just means the VM doesn't support Igor's new finalization stuff yet.) Brave and noble souls will download it on various platforms, run the tests, and generally make sure the image is good. -- Casey Ransberger

5 9

Jump to page: