Squeak-dev August 2000

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130 participants
418 discussions

ICFP Compition: Squeak Ray tracing entry
by Rob Withers 31 Aug '00

31 Aug '00

So here is what we managed to do in 72 hours and submitted in the nick of time. We includes Andreas Raab, Ned Konz, Bert Freudenberg, Bijan Parsia, John McIntosh and I. Many, many thanks to them for a fantastic piece of hacking. So what is it? There is a simplified functional programming language with scene description extensions called GML. It has closures, arrays, numbers, stringliterals, and variables. We had to parse and execute this little language and ray trace the scene when a #render function was invoked. It is a postfix language, so we implemented a simple stack-based machine that processed them, holding the stack and the environment dictionary. When a closure is created, it gets it's own environment. The renderer doesn't utilize all of the primitives available, unfortunately, but Andreas or Bert could explain this better. Something about a cubic attenuation of the lighting model, which is a good approximation for LA smog (or is it quartic)? You need tgen to run this which can be had at http://callisto.swiki.net/1 I would include the images but they are too big. You'll just have to render them youselves! ;-) Look in the comment of GMLSimpleMachine for examples... enjoy! Rob -- -------------------------------------------------- Smalltalking by choice. Isn't it nice to have one!

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Re: [UNIX] [BUGS] [FIX] headless vm, small fixes
by Tim Rowledge 31 Aug '00

31 Aug '00

Ian Piumarta <Ian.Piumarta(a)inria.fr> is widely believed to have written: [snip] > But the "problem" occurs when looking in an external module, not an > internal one. Oh - duh, I had lost the context and assumed it was internal stuff causing the problem. [snip] > Helpful, eh? My gut reaction has always been to try to make things > work identically everywhere, even when this means ignoring a > whizz-bang feature like RTLD_LOCAL because the behaviour cannot be > simulated reliably on all Unixes. But maybe I'm wrong in thinking > this way?) Sounds like the usual problem afflicting unices - it's the same everywhere except for <insert list almost as long the the OS sourcecode>. If Linux can do the 'right' thing and others can't maybe it would be best to live with that? It sounds as if you can provide a Pareto-efficient solution. tim -- Tim Rowledge, tim(a)sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim Maintenance free: It's impossible to fix.

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RE: [UNIX] [BUGS] [FIX] headless vm, small fixes
by Raab, Andreas 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

> > Arranging for the generated files to take note of a > > -DPLUGIN symbol to > > compile themselves in "external plugin mode", for example, would be > > perfect. I could trivially rebuild the sqNamedPrims.h file in the > > process, to reflect which plugins were "externalised". > > It isn't clear to me whether you'all in this thread have > noted that the Slang translator generates different C code > for modules (and the VM hooks I'd suppose) depending on whether > they are to be compiled with the VM or as separate plugin files. > In other words, plugins generated for inclusion with > the vm should not be compiled as standalone, and vice versa. > Check out the changes inthe InterpreterPlugin class>>translation > category (doh! obviously). 'locally' there means 'baked into the vm'. > There are also way simple hooks for eg. leaving FFI out of the vm. BTW - I'd actually like to get rid of the different translation methods if somehow possible. All that *should* be needed is really a -DPLUGIN (or whatever) so one actually has a choice about this at compile time. Unfortunately there a few tricky aspects involved which I couldn't quite figure out how to solve at the time Tim and I were working on this stuff. If somebody knows how to fix it please go ahead and send me the modifications. > > byeBye > > "Smalltalk byeBye" > > > > <primitive: 'exit' module: 'System'> > > self error: 'this should never be reached'! ! > > Ouch, this looks like a bug to me, but my Unix eyesight isn't > 20/20. Tried it--does not work on the Mac. What about Win? Doesn't work on neither Mac or Win. That's because Mac/Win restrict the exported symbol by using either the #pragma export (Mac) or the EXPORT() macro (Win) to *only* export those specially marked functions. And 'exit' is none of these. - Andreas

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Re: [UNIX] [BUGS] [FIX] headless vm, small fixes
by Ian Piumarta 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

> From: Mats Nygren <nygren(a)sics.se> > > I have tried to delete FFI-references fore awhile. Hiding files in other > directories, removing code from files including from generated files, > the mess is still growing. Surely this is not how it should work. Adding > a particular module shouldn't be able to mess up the whole machine > generation process. Agreed. I mentioned some of these problems in the message announcing 2.8pre2. It would help enormously if: - file names were consistent, i.e. FooPlugin contains the plugin, with all the EXPORT declarations and suchlike; then - sqFooPrims contains any generated primitives on which FooPlugin depends; - thinks like Squeak3D didn't have zillions of smaller b3dXYZ files (with no obvious relation to their "dependent") as dependencies. This last one really bothers me. I can see no good reason why Squeak3D should be generated along with the interp.c and other support files, and then be included in the sqNamedPrims. It has worked perfectly as a module for ages, has never needed to be listed in the sqNamedPrims, and lived quite happily in its own dir where the dependencies were obvious and easy to manage. Unless this situation is sorted out soon I'm going to abandon the part of configure that deduces dependencies automatically, and insist on a file that contains explicit dependency information for the plugins. This will be a real pain, because it would have to be edited whenever a plugin were added/removed/renamed/whatever. But the alternative (a growing list of completely random rules for figuring out which files belong in which modules) is a worse pain, and utterly unmanageable. > For a unix machine I see two alternatives (there should be more): > > 1) Control the build process from within Squeak and have a description > in Squeak-syntax of the VM. (What modules should be included etc) This > would need OSProcess and probably be unix-specific, in the beginning at > least. Simply a file containing lines of the form NameOfMainPlugin.c [AuxPrimsFile1.c [AuxPrimsFile2.c [...]]] would be more than enough to solve the problem, and isn't specific to any OS. (W.r.t. OPP: there's absolutely no need to use an elephant gun just to squash a bug.) > 2) Have a simple way of describing parameters for the build, from > outside of Squeak. Again this would probably be unix-specific in the > beginning. Arranging for the generated files to take note of a -DPLUGIN symbol to compile themselves in "external plugin mode", for example, would be perfect. I could trivially rebuild the sqNamedPrims.h file in the process, to reflect which plugins were "externalised". > Manually changing generated files should never be a part of describing > things the new VM. Agreed! FWIW, anyone who has regenerated the source files from inside the image will also notice a Unix-specific FFI prims file that comes out in the mix. If this files isn't deleted then lots of other things will blow up (and probably go "pop!" too). > I find this very irritating at the moment, having decided to work with > the syntactic part of VM-generation Yes! > I don't want learn m4, configure, etc at the moment. (In fact I > would like to avoid those for ever if possible) Exactly! That's part of *my* job, not yours. And for the time being the only realistic solutions are: - reorganise the naming and mix of files that are generated automatically along with interp.c; or - give up on trying to figure out what belongs where (which was working perfectly right up the final Mac 2.8 when suddenly Squeak3D, SoundCodec and the FFI stuff [named all wrong] popped out of the translation process) and use a hand-edited plugin description file instead. > Could somebody fix this please. For building when libffi isn't there the fix is trivial. I'll do it today. For the organisation, that has to be fixed by somebody who has the right to meddle with the files generated by/stored in the image. Which isn't me. Andreas and John Mc are probably the most likely candidates. > The particular problem with FFI, since according to Bert (below) > this isn't necesserary what everybody wants, why not make configure > arrange for it to be left out, if it isn't found on the machine? This is the intention, and this is how I thought it worked. But note again: I had to remove an unwanted file from the generation process, and add a #ifdef NO_FFI_SUPPORT (or something similar, I think I "autoconfified" the name to HAVE_LIBFFI -- but it was missing completely in the first place, so I don't feel guilty about that) which was simply missing in one of the generated files. If you've regenerated the support files from within the image then zillions of things will (and should) break -- since the generated files are wrong. > If this is difficult to arrange then some things is > severely wrong with the current organization of the build process. It's not difficult to arrange, it just requires a little time and motivation from someone in charge of the image side of things. > Thanks for the help so far. I do wish to be able to work with this > without first becoming an expert of every detail of the build process. I know how you feel. (But as a minor consolation: if you've learned something this week, you never know when you'll be really glad to have that knowledge.) > > Since FFI is a major security risc I normally don't want it to be compiled > > into the VM. I also set SQUEAK_SECURE. Am I paranoid? ;-) It's not really that much more of a risk than the current named prims, which give access to every single system call on the machine from within Squeak. (It just makes passing arguments to them a little less problematic.) Ciao, Ian

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squeak for web applications?
by Lyn A Headley 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

hi, I've always thought smalltalk was pretty kick ass, and I like to keep my eyes open for possible cool web development environments. I've had a look at the swiki, but I don't see a section on web development, except for references to comanche. Personally, I am a big fan of interfacing squeak to apache. This offloads all the work of writing a scalable, complete http server to a world-class team of programmers, and has other benefits as well (think hosting options). There's also the issue of SQL interfaces. Anybody want to provide an update on the state of the art in writing big-time web apps with squeak? -Lyn

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Re: [ENH] SubjectPrefixForCS-dew
by Daniel Vainsencher 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

dway(a)riskmetrics.com wrote: > Also fixes MailMessage>>fieldsAsMimeHeader so that the email subject is > not forced to lowercase. (Side note: I don't understand why the > MIMEHeaderValue objects are always lowercase in the first place.)"! Well, its an ugly hack Im not proud of, but MIME header parameters are specified as case insensitive (most of the time - see the RFC, my memory is fuzzy on this). A better solution would be welcome, but dont leave it broken. Daniel

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Re: Font installation changed?
by Bob Arning 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

Hi Mark, I encounered similar problems doing some stuff in 2.9a. You might take a look at the two FontSet changes I made in change set 2425 in 2.9a. They seemed to fix the problem I was encountering. Cheers, Bob On Wed, 30 Aug 2000 10:56:11 -0400 Mark Guzdial <guzdial(a)cc.gatech.edu> wrote: >I have a font set that worked great in 2.7, but isn't working now in >2.8. installAsTextStyle kept trying to create a nonsensical name for >the font (e.g., it was taking part of the font name by copying it >from 7 to 4), and once I patched that, it couldn't read the literal >anymore. Do I need to recreate the font from the original BitFont >file?

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Re: [UNIX] [BUGS] [FIX] headless vm, small fixes
by Bert Freudenberg 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Ian Piumarta wrote: > > Really? I thought with the non-FFI prims you can only load Squeak modules, > > Try this (replace 'System' with any plugin that you know exists and can be found > by the VM): > > 'From Squeak2.8 of 13 June 2000 [latest update: #2359] on 30 August 2000 at 5:44 > :26 pm'! > > !SystemDictionary methodsFor: 'miscellaneous' stamp: 'ikp 8/30/2000 17:44'! > byeBye > "Smalltalk byeBye" > > <primitive: 'exit' module: 'System'> > self error: 'this should never be reached'! ! Oh my goodness. Yes, now I know why Andreas insists on modules *only* exporting the functions marked as EXPORT. Can you arrange this for the Unix stuff? -- Bert

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Re: Help with Squeak presentation to DoD!
by John O'Shea 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

>I'm going to be giving a presentation to some DoD folks about the >wonders of Squeak and why it ought to be seriously consider as a >candidate for development work (for a wargaming project). I'm >currently using it for the prototype, so naturally the question >arose: Should we continue to use Squeak (Smalltalk in general vs. >C++, Java, etc. [the usual suspects])? You might want to contact the author of this job posting, one Donald Malcolm MacQueen <dmacq(a)erols.com>: >JWARS (The Joint Warfare System) is a multiyear project >sponsored by the Department of Defense. We are building >a large simulation of theater level warfare using >VisualAge Smalltalk. We are doing things that have >never been done before in DoD simulations. <http://x51.deja.com/%5BST_rn=ps%5D/getdoc.xp?AN=614066968&CONTEXT=967649787…> (should all be on one line) It was posted on comp.lang.smalltalk a few months back and attracted a lot of very off-topic followups from what I dimly recall - I didn't really follow the topic. Hope that helps, -- John O'Shea <mailto:john_oshea@wordbank.co.uk> PGP fingerprint: 9A0A 47F7 A822 813E FFD4 B7B9 4194 C3F8 E610 F7C4

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Font installation changed?
by Mark Guzdial 30 Aug '00

30 Aug '00

I have a font set that worked great in 2.7, but isn't working now in 2.8. installAsTextStyle kept trying to create a nonsensical name for the font (e.g., it was taking part of the font name by copying it from 7 to 4), and once I patched that, it couldn't read the literal anymore. Do I need to recreate the font from the original BitFont file? Thanks! Mark -------------------------- Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies. Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/ (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial(a)cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html

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