Beginners January 2009

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39 discussions

Found some issues, getting HPDF to work
by Stephan Eggermont 10 Jan '09

10 Jan '09

After saving and closing and restarting squeak, the FFI tests are green. The saving of a empty document test fails, as the document is written to a different location than where it is expected: testSavingEmptyDocument [PDFDocument new saveToFile: self pdfFileName. self assert: (FileDirectory default fileExists: self pdfFileName)] ensure: [self checkTestFileDeleted] where self pdfFileName is ^'test.pdf'. This fails as FileDirectory default is '/Applications/Seaside-2.8-573.app/Contents/Resources' and the file ends up in '/Applications' Where does libhpd get its default directory, as it is an external library? Sounds like it should be translated to an absolute path on the squeak side. Stephan

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Which environment?
by Steve Wessels 10 Jan '09

10 Jan '09

I'm very interested in the topic of which environment for Squeak is best suited for new developers. When I created the Laser Game tutorial 2 years ago I was aware of the emerging 3.10 and DEV environments. Yet I chose the base 3.9 system. There were a few vocal opinions at the time that this was such poor choice on my part that some actually recommended against using the tutorial. I've begun on an update/rewrite and have really struggled over the choice. I too am a big fan of improving the tools, and look and feel of Squeak to make it more modern to the common Eclipse user (for example). I wrote the Skins package back in 1998 as one way of improving Squeak's marketability and appeal. The concerns I have over which environment to use goes like this: 1. It must be stable and reliable. 2. One click install. The student should not have to go through several web pages, answer a survey, or install packages to begin working. 3. A consistent web location. This makes www.squeak.org appealing. 4. It must be easy to navigate and remain fairly consistent. I'm not keen about documenting menus that are no longer valid. The recent thread about stability reminds me that the base image, with it's faults, may still be best. I've restarted writing two chapters in my updated tutorial more than once now because I keep doubting which choice is optimal. Love to see a sane, reasoned discussion about this. - Steve On Jan 9, 2009, at 6:27 PM, "Cameron Sanders" <camsanders01(a)roadrunner.com> wrote: I thought the Pharo base image (3.10 with a few fonts & Balloon3d added) running on Windows was looking pretty stable. But after an hour of editing code --an hour since the last save—Squeak has abandoned me. It is unresponsive. Trying both control and alt in combination with ‘.’, ‘l’ (lower case L), ‘c’, does nothing apparently useful. I tried a few other weird combos I thought I saw, but nothing visibly changed. The process stack reported by Vista shows it to be incurring page-faults like mad. [OK, that has subsided while I typed this email.] My machine has 4 GB of RAM, I am running two instances of internet-explorer, and I have turned off the Windows search-indexing service. I know Vista has a guess-the-next-program pre-loader that could be a little overzealous in displacing programs from RAM… but still… it seems like this 101MB program shouldn’t generate any page faults when the other two leading memory pigs are using less than double that much virtual memory. Vista’s Resource Monitor claims I am using only 43% of physical memory. The page-fault count for Squeak.exe doubled while I typed this message. When I click the Squeak icon on the window frame of the running copy (upper left on Windows), I do see the menu for VM Preferences. It shows me the menu and allows me to invoke actions. It will allow me to toggle the “Show output console” on and off. The output console shows me changes to memory (as I have that option checked). I can use my mouse wheel to scroll this console. Control-‘.’ and Control-c (and lower case L) in this console do not change anything. After mucking around in the console area, I am now getting “WARNING: event buffer overflow” just moving my mouse around in squeak. After turning the console off, the pointer is now invisible except when you click. It appears that the overall squeak window is repainting itself properly. -- Help me debug it I have an interest in building a commercial application in Squeak. The FAQs says squeak is stable. Given the active community of developers (including The Great Ones), I imagine that it is stable, and that I am just doing something dumb… repeatedly. However, for Squeak to be adopted more broadly, it can’t go zombie on users, even when the user does something dumb. That’s an absolute. What is the longest uptime a squeak image has ever endured (while doing something useful)? Which version was that and on what platform? So I am willing to work to help make squeak more robust, but as a complete newbie with it, I need much guidance. So right now, with this hung-up image, what should I do? Should I attach to it with gdb? And if so, then what? [If the internal process control is working, I won’t be able to make heads or tales out of it from gdb, right?] Or can I launch another squeak and send it a signal in some way [is it listening?]? What is most useful in this case? [Is there a way in Windows/Vista to signal an app so as to force a core dump?] Thanks in advance, Cam PS: I want to emphasize that I do not care about the code lost in this particular instance (it was tutorial code), instead I am looking for a stable free development environment… and I’m willing to help make one. __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 3755 (20090109) __________ The message was checked by ESET Smart Security. http://www.eset.com _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list Beginners(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

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squeak locks up on windows / help me debug it...
by Cameron Sanders 10 Jan '09

10 Jan '09

I thought the Pharo base image (3.10 with a few fonts & Balloon3d added) running on Windows was looking pretty stable. But after an hour of editing code --an hour since the last save-Squeak has abandoned me. It is unresponsive. Trying both control and alt in combination with '.', 'l' (lower case L), 'c', does nothing apparently useful. I tried a few other weird combos I thought I saw, but nothing visibly changed. The process stack reported by Vista shows it to be incurring page-faults like mad. [OK, that has subsided while I typed this email.] My machine has 4 GB of RAM, I am running two instances of internet-explorer, and I have turned off the Windows search-indexing service. I know Vista has a guess-the-next-program pre-loader that could be a little overzealous in displacing programs from RAM. but still. it seems like this 101MB program shouldn't generate any page faults when the other two leading memory pigs are using less than double that much virtual memory. Vista's Resource Monitor claims I am using only 43% of physical memory. The page-fault count for Squeak.exe doubled while I typed this message. When I click the Squeak icon on the window frame of the running copy (upper left on Windows), I do see the menu for VM Preferences. It shows me the menu and allows me to invoke actions. It will allow me to toggle the "Show output console" on and off. The output console shows me changes to memory (as I have that option checked). I can use my mouse wheel to scroll this console. Control-'.' and Control-c (and lower case L) in this console do not change anything. After mucking around in the console area, I am now getting "WARNING: event buffer overflow" just moving my mouse around in squeak. After turning the console off, the pointer is now invisible except when you click. It appears that the overall squeak window is repainting itself properly. -- Help me debug it I have an interest in building a commercial application in Squeak. The FAQs says squeak is stable. Given the active community of developers (including The Great Ones), I imagine that it is stable, and that I am just doing something dumb. repeatedly. However, for Squeak to be adopted more broadly, it can't go zombie on users, even when the user does something dumb. That's an absolute. What is the longest uptime a squeak image has ever endured (while doing something useful)? Which version was that and on what platform? So I am willing to work to help make squeak more robust, but as a complete newbie with it, I need much guidance. So right now, with this hung-up image, what should I do? Should I attach to it with gdb? And if so, then what? [If the internal process control is working, I won't be able to make heads or tales out of it from gdb, right?] Or can I launch another squeak and send it a signal in some way [is it listening?]? What is most useful in this case? [Is there a way in Windows/Vista to signal an app so as to force a core dump?] Thanks in advance, Cam PS: I want to emphasize that I do not care about the code lost in this particular instance (it was tutorial code), instead I am looking for a stable free development environment. and I'm willing to help make one.

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How does one import code from VW? and 3d...
by Cameron Sanders 09 Jan '09

09 Jan '09

I just discovered Squeak this last fall and I am quite impressed. Although I had deemed the system "too unstable" until I discovered the Pharo base image. Previous attempts to install the full, or various components of, squeak-dev led to myriad debugger sessions, which, right out of the box is not very attractive. Now I have a rich, stable and visually appealing Squeak development environment. The first question that comes to mind is this: how can I most easily import code I wrote in Cincom's VW NC environment? (It ejects it in xml.) Additional questions: I would like to do some 3d visualization; should I pursue Croquet, Balloon, or other? Actually, long-term I might like the Croquet collaborative-tools, however, to begin with, I just need some visualization capabilities. An import of Balloon3d choked, so I pulled it in via Monticello - but it appears to be unusable in my image. Are the special libs I need? And if I start with Croquet, then I lose the comfortable feeling and stability of Pharo - or is it possible to pull in just the graphics components of croquet? Any guidance is appreciated, as I am just getting my feet wet here. How many processes should I see running? [e.g. 3 plus 1 per window?] Thanks in advance! Cam

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Re: Test Driven Development
by Jerome Peace 06 Jan '09

06 Jan '09

[Newbies] Test Driven Development Hi Ryan, >Ryan Zerby tahognome at gmail.com >Mon Jan 5 14:31:26 UTC 2009 > > >I've run through "Squeak By Example" and have I was curious what kind >of TDD would be appropriate on Quinto. I got stuck writing a reply to you then I found this: What's the Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work? http://www.artima.com/intv/simplest3.html by one of the guys that invented it all. ==== Partial progress counts. The question to ask is, "What type of testing would give me peace of mind?" About your program? When I am programing things graphical, I usually code until I have enough stuff working I can debug graphically. It means writing a test cases in a workspace to gen up the morph or the graphic. Playing with it until something unusual happens then thinking about why the unusual results. Then more trial and error. If I code too much, I will start to get needle-in-a-haystack uneasy about debugging the code. When that happens its time to write examples or tests to prove the pieces. Graphics can be sampled and the samples compared with known results. So debugging graphics can be getting it to do what you want. Saving that then writing a assertion that the example will make the same result during the test. You'll will know when you have a useful test. Once you've written it, after each change you run it again. Half the time it will surprise you with its results. Sometimes because they pass, more often because they fail. If you get surprises you've got a good test. Write more like it. > It seems so graphic oriented >that I'm having a tough time coming up with tests that even begin to >feel complete, without feeling like I'm testing the Morphic framework, >or a bunch of setters, rather than Quinto. The only test I could >think of was testing that neighbor cells were actually changed when >the proper method was executed. > Cool. >Is that really the case, or am I missing something? I've done TDD >before, but there was a lot more 'behind the scenes' work to test in >those cases. > What is the user story for Quinto? What are you trying to do? How will you know when you've accomplished it? What is the user experience (in the story) of using Quinto? What testing will allow you do a better job? To be more adventurous in your experimenting? I have an imaginative assistant Puck. ( I said imaginary but he insisted I change it. :) Who is in charge of coming up with test cases. More on his role after you answer the above. Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace

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Accessors for everything?
by Ryan Zerby 06 Jan '09

06 Jan '09

I'm going through the laser game example presented on this list a short time ago. I notice that he creates accessors for everything. Can someone explain the reasoning for that? I can understand having a wrapper for those functions for which you want external access. However, doesn't it effectively remove the protection of private variables by providing such open access on EVERYTHING. What's the Tao of Squeak on this subject?

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Test Driven Development
by Stephen Moffitt 05 Jan '09

05 Jan '09

Hi Ryan, There is another good example of Squeak development by Stephan Wessels here http://squeak.preeminent.org/tut2007/html/index.html that had a great deal of TDD. Steve

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Test Driven Development
by Ryan Zerby 05 Jan '09

05 Jan '09

I've run through "Squeak By Example" and have I was curious what kind of TDD would be appropriate on Quinto. It seems so graphic oriented that I'm having a tough time coming up with tests that even begin to feel complete, without feeling like I'm testing the Morphic framework, or a bunch of setters, rather than Quinto. The only test I could think of was testing that neighbor cells were actually changed when the proper method was executed. Is that really the case, or am I missing something? I've done TDD before, but there was a lot more 'behind the scenes' work to test in those cases.

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Getting HPDF to work on OS X
by Stephan Eggermont 04 Jan '09

04 Jan '09

Hello, After using libHaru on a windows squeak, I decided to try on my Mac OS X the same. On the pc, I just installed FFI, copied a FFIPlugin and libhpdf.dll to the squeak directory, and was done (after installing HPDF from squeaksource). On the OS X machine, I started with the seaside one-click: 2.8-573. As there is no pre-compiled libHaru for OS-X, I installed one through macports. It takes a while, as it has a few dependencies. I ended up with an libhpdf.dylib in: /opt/local/lib In Michael Davies blog I found squeak expects a link to the library in: /Applications/Seaside-2.8-573.app/Contents/Resources so, I cd-ed there and created a link: ln -s /opt/local/lib/libhpdf-2.1.0.dylib libhpdf In the same directory is also an alias libhpdf.dylib. Am I supposed to use that? I then tried running the tests, but noticed that the FFIplugin tests were red. I took a look at a 3.8.18beta3U.app from 3.10.2-7179 and noticed it had many more files in the Contents/Resources. Copying the SqueakFFIPrims.bundle to the equivalent location in the Seaside image helped to get some test running, though not those involved with saving a file. Which version of the bundle should I add to get all tests green? Stephan Eggermont

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Beginners January 2009