Anreas K. gave some good references if you want to learn more. But
should you?

So - A (short?) blurb about the RB, Smalllint and Rewrite Rule editor
(The RB tool family), for those not very familiar with it.

I think code can be beautiful. And like a statue in a popular plaza,
very public code (Squeak's code) very much should be.

I also think that artists/artisan deserve to have good, powerful tools.
I say good as well as powerful, because tools can be powerful but push
you in an ugly direction... 

And programmers, specifically, can have an enormous range of quality for
their tools. The standard Smalltalk tools make most others look like
bent nails and hammers with over-long handles. Well, the RB tools are
the next step up. 

So, what do they do?
The Refactoring Browser itself mirrors some of the wonderful big-picture
query tools (senders/implementors) with big-picture modification tools -
Rename Method will rename the method and adjust all the senders
accordingly. When you're writing Smalltalk code you write small methods
right? what if they get big? Extract Method means you can make them
smaller painlessly - mark the code to extract, give the name for the new
method, and voila.

This is the most accessible tool of the lot. You just use it like a
regular browser, except when you want to do something it supports
(rename that temporary variable), it's much easier. Please try it for a
month, it'll help make our public space look better.

Smalllint is based on a framework within the RB that does arbitrary
parse-tree matching. It is a library of patterns for dubious code. For
example, it will complain at a condition where the last statement is
identical in both branches. You can easily turn it unto a bunch of
classes, and it tries to find all those problems in it, giving you a
detailed report. It's a great way to start cleaning up a module, which
is a great way to get to know something and help make it better. So just
run Smalllint on some piece of code, make it better, and send in the
enhancement. Reading other people bad code is a great way to learn what
not to do.

Some people I met at ESUG have done extensions that make Smalllint also
usable as a long-term quality management tool. I'll try to get those
mods to port them to Squeak. More on that another time.

The Rewrite Rule Editor is a powerful and mysterious artefact. I'll
start by saying we currently don't seem to have Squeak UI for it. Also
the UIs for other platforms are not satisfactory - I didn't quite
understand the tool until I read the code for it! So what is it? well,
where Lint can be used to detect predefined baddies, this tool allow you
to create rules that actually rewrite code. When you suddenly discover
that there's a much better way of doing something (than what we've all
been coding for years), or that you could get lots of information if you
could only instrument 300 methods just this way... this tool is what you
need.

Again, some people at CampSmalltalk had started rethinking the UI to
make this tool more approachable and useful. If anyone is interested in
collaborating with them and getting us a Squeak version in the process,
I'll give you their contact info.

BTW, if you care about your tools, there're lots more fascinating
projects out there being done in the Smalltalk community that we could
benefit from having handy. A couple that were shown in ESUG - 
* QSOUL (Squeak based, but not done) and 
* CodeCrawler (VW based, but might be portable. Also, it can read code
from Squeak, so we could use it, if not in the preferred reflective
style).

</sales pitch (it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it...;-)>

Daniel Vainsencher

"Andreas Kuckartz" <a.kuckartz at dokom.net> wrote:
> > Bob Hartwig's site includes a UI for the Lint tool (find bugs, code
> > smells, and oddities automatically) which is uses the RB model. We
> > haven't tested or modified it.
> 
> That is
> http://www.bobjectsinc.com/squeakrbalpha/download/LintUI.9.cs.gz
> 
> Decompress and file it in after the RB-files and execute "LintDialog open".
> Then select items in the different panes and hit the "RUN" button. Only
> select a few classes until you have a feeling for the expected execution
> time or at least schedule a coffee-break ... Click on an item in the
> resulting report and a RB opens.
> 
> First impression: it seems to work fine. (The RBs for "Variables not
> referenced" do not show the names of the variables.)
> 
> Further information about Smalllint is avalable here:
> http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/brant/Refactory/Lint.html
> 
> and the rules are explained there:
> http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/brant/Refactory/LintChecks.html
> 
> Andreas