Hi -

The FFI is now up at SqueakMap. Grab the latest 3.9 "update map from the 
net" and you should be able to load it without any problems. If you (or 
anyone else) encounters problems, please file a bug - I think I got the 
installation issues nailed but more testing is welcome.

I have also used this update to make a few more changes like:

* Restructuring the FFI packages: This was required since the kernel 
needs to be loaded first such that the rest (tests+examples) can be 
parsed properly.

* Some "interesting" initialization fixes to make it possible to load 
the FFI-Kernel package properly. Obviously nobody has ever to 
load/unload those before - there were bugs in there that made even me 
blush ;-)

* SUnit-ized the existing tests: While noting that the "FFI-Plugin" 
category contained only tests, I changed it to "FFI-Tests" and rewrote 
the existing tests to be SUnit style.

There is one problem left, namely that an unload of the FFI will only be 
clean if and only if PackageInfo is updated first. 3.9 contains an 
outdated version of PI which does not support scripts properly and while 
loading seems to work okay (mostly because the load script will be 
executed even if not preserved) unloading will require manual cleanup. 
Can't be helped at this point.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

astares at gmx.de wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Ok - FFI support is removed. But how to get it back? I havent found
> the Monticello packages on the usual places (PackageLoader/SqueakMap, 
> SqueakSource.com)
> 
> I was lucky to see the mcz still be available from 
> http://source.squeakfoundation.org/39a/ but it was not loadable 
> in the first place.
> 
> If one wants to use SQLite, ODBC, ExternalWebBrowser, ... FFI is required. 
> 
> Any newbee loading one of these packages using PackageLoader will run into 
> trouble, declare Squeak as useless and will soon delete Squeak from it's harddisk! 
> This will definitely not help the community to grow - instead we may end
> up with only a few people (most of them burned out like Marcus) :(
> 
> I feel a little bit sad that there is no reliable process behind all that - 
> next time we may decide to remove Morphic in the last minute. 
> 
> There may be reasons for Andreas to get FFI removed (IMHO I agree that FFI
> should not be a part of the base image) but why speak up so late?  
> 
> Dont know how usefull the initial "Release Plan for 3.9" really was ...
> (see http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5645)
> 
> However - I'm happy that a new version is out. :)
> Thanks for all the hard work! 
> 
> bye
> Torsten
>