I took a look at the latest snapshots of the IronRuby code from svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ironruby but I wasn't able to build it this time.

There's an in-depth article about the DLR and IronPython at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163344.aspx. Python builds nicely and you can execute sample scripts but the code seems to have been refactored quite a bit since then and the tutorial is now quite hard to follow. The source is at http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython - you will need to install TortoiseSVN and a thing called SvnBridge to get the latest code from Microsoft. The license is BSD-compatible.

Both these projects and the underlying DLR seem to assume that dynamic languages are scripting languages. I think that this is not entirely consistent with the way Smalltalk works, but I suppose there's no reason you couldn't build a Smalltalk compiler that works as a scripting language. You would need to do something like this to bootstrap the environment anyhow.

One of the things I like about Smalltalk is that all the tools (e.g. Transcript, Workspace, Code Browsers and Debuggers) are all written in Smalltalk (it's tortoises all the way down!). I think it would be interesting to implement these components in a library that could be loaded into an application domain for development purposes. I don't think that using vim or emacs to develop Smalltalk code would be particularly productive and some native tools would provide a more incremental development environment than Visual Studio.

To get started on a project like this I guess you would need to have a look at building a Smalltalk Language Provider. The easiest way to get this up and running would probably be to have a look at SmaCC and #Smalltalk - I think the parsing and code generation would be much the same whether you're targeting the CLR or the DLR.

A key milestone might be to have something that's self hosting. If the DLR was packaged as a DLL instead of a project dependency, then you could write the compiler in Smalltalk instead of C#.

The code is here http://www.refactory.com/Software/SharpSmalltalk/ - I think it's already self-hosting on the CLR. I believe that John Brant discussed some of the conceptual differences between Smalltalk and .NET on comp.lang.smalltalk a few years ago.

Steve

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 7:06 AM, Steve Wart <steve.wart@gmail.com> wrote:

Could be interesting. I'm not using Windows much anymore but my PC should be here in a couple of weeks. I managed to build IronRuby from source at one point. Based on what I've read on various blogs it sounds like it should be possible to extract the DLR from that, but maybe your contacts in MS can point us at a DLR-specific svn repository ;-)

I suggest we set up a google or yahoo group to drive into the details. Anyone who's interested in helping or lurking can follow along there.

Cheers,
Steve

2008/8/15 Gary Short <gary@garyshort.org>

Hello Robert,

 

With regard to IronSmalltalk, I started it up just after I came back from the MVP summit in Seattle, I'd been talking to the dynamic languages team out there and got really fired up about the idea. As normal, right after I posted about it I got swamped with work and so, to date, it has gone nowhere. However, coincidentally, I am now in a position to start working on it again. I'm in the process of getting my head around the DLR and the ANSI Smalltalk spec so, as yet, no actual code has been written, but I'm going to be getting to that soon (for some definition of soon <grin>). As for do I need help? Hell yeah! LOL, are you (or anybody else) interested?

 

Regards,

Gary

http://www.garyshort.org

MVP C#

 

From: uksmalltalk-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:uksmalltalk-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Robert Johnson
Sent: 14 August 2008 13:30
To: uksmalltalk@lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Whats happening with IronSmalltalk ?

 

In May there was some discussion between Gary Short and Steve Wart about the creating an IronSmalltalk implementation. Is someone currently working on IronSmalltalk ? If so do they need any help?

Robert Johnson

 

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