Whats happening with IronSmalltalk ?

[Steve Wart]

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 at 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 at 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 at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:
>> uksmalltalk-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] *On Behalf Of *Robert
>> Johnson
>> *Sent:* 14 August 2008 13:30
>> *To:* uksmalltalk at 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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