Squeak-dev December 2001

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137 participants
354 discussions

VMMaker thoughts
by Lex Spoon 01 Jan '02

01 Jan '02

I've finally started playing with VMMaker, and have a few thoughts that might make it smoother, at least on Unix. First, it doesn't really need to copy files around, does it? It's no trouble to write the makefile, at least on Unix, to compile files directly from the two different locations. Second, how about creating a file each listing the internal and external plugins that are to be used? This would be handy for generating the makefile, especially if files aren't copied around any longer. Finally, let's have some space in CVS for files that are shared among multiple platforms. In particular, libmpeg should be shared; it seems silly to copy all of libmpeg to each platform's MPEGPlugin subdirectory. Actually, from my quick glance, I don't see libmpeg in there at all. If it's not there, let's put it there! -Lex

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finalization and garbage collection
by Ross Boylan 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

Is there a method that is guaranteed to be executed just before an object is garbage collected? I thought #finalize was it, but looking at senders in the image and ObjectMemory code, it appears that this only gets called when something that is weakly held gets cleaned up. The weak apparatus seems to use both finalize and the executor mechanism, and I'm not sure what the roles of these two parts are. I got into this while cleaning up a mess, but I don't really need the answers to do so. I'm just curious. Happy New Year everyone!

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Re: Naive questions on cascade syntaxe
by Lex Spoon 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

> I don't know what ANSI says, but... > > A cascade is a series of messages sent to the same receiver. > The receiver that is used is the receiver of the (outermost) > message that precedes the first semicolon. > > Another way of thinking about it is... > r m1; m2; m3; m4 > is essentially equivalent to > x := r. > x m1. > x m2. > x m3 > except that this is not an expression (it's a block body), and there's an extra temp needed here. How about when non-cascaded messages are interspersed? I'd love to know a simple rule. Here are some example cases: a x y; z 0 x y: 1 ; z 0 + 3 x y ; z 0 + 3 x y ; * 3 0 + 3 x y ; times: 3 Cascades are the only part of Smalltalk syntax that confused me when I wrote a Smalltalk parser a few years ago. In fact, I still don't understand it. Reading Squeak's parser, it appears that cascades happen at the location that is most convenient. :) Reading the BNF syntax on the Swiki, handling cascades seems to the main reason it is more than just a few lines long. Okay, here's my shot. First, cascades cannot have a message sent to them (so, "a b; c + 3" is illegal). That is, the cascade messages are "top-level", in a certain sense (probably a sense that's not strictly correct, but this is English. I'm allowed.) Second, the cascade applies to the message of *lowest priority* just to the left of the cascade. That is, if there is a keyword message, then the cascade applies to the keyword message; otherwise, look for a binary message; otherwise, use a keyword message. (There has to be at least *one* message before you start cascading!) So here are my guesses on the above: (a x) y; z (0 x) y: 1; z 0 + (3 x y) ; z 0 + (3 x y) ; * 3 9 + (3 x y) ; times: 3 I guess I could generate some parse trees and check, but already I'm spending too long reading this exciting mailing list when I should be doing other things! Incidentally, ANSI doesn't make this issue obvious, though it might be in there and I just didn't dig deeply enough. -Lex

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Re: [GOODIE] instance analyser
by Lex Spoon 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

Bob Arning <arning(a)charm.net> wrote: > On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 13:18:44 +0100 (MET) stephane ducasse <ducasse(a)iam.unibe.ch> wrote: > >A simple tool sorting the classes according to the number of instances > >they have currently in the image. > > Stephane, > > You might want to look at > > Smalltalk spaceTally > > and related methods. > What I like to think about, is how to make the existing code base easier to *find* and to *understand*. In fact, I even knew that there was code to do something like this, just from having seen someone post about it on the mailing list in the past. But I couldn't remember where it was.... -Lex

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[ANN][VM][SF] my Unix patches integrated into SF layout
by Lex Spoon 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

I'm giving up on keeping my changes patchable from Ian Piumarta's distribution. All the patches are starting to overlap, and so it is becoming impractical to apply individual patches, anyway. Plus, I'd like to switch to using VMMaker, which means moving all the files around.... I've posted the work on the Swiki: http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2173 The most notable changes are that it's friendly to VMMaker, and that the autoconf script can be used for more settings now. There are also some minor bugs fixed regarding sound. I would be perfectly happy for these to get folded into the communal source forge site, if people want to go that route. -Lex

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[BUG] Storing BookMorphs
by blue.moon＠tiscali.nl 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

When trying to store a BookMorph (containing only 1 page) via ftp I keep getting a 'subscript is out of bounds' error in the ReferenceStream's project method. The method tries to iterate over items of the collection stored in attribute 'topCall' (which is supposed to be the root object to be stored), but the collection only contains 2 objects (of which the second is the book page). Any clues? Rudi Angela

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Re: [GOODIE] instance analyser
by Bob Arning 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 13:18:44 +0100 (MET) stephane ducasse <ducasse(a)iam.unibe.ch> wrote: >A simple tool sorting the classes according to the number of instances >they have currently in the image. Stephane, You might want to look at Smalltalk spaceTally and related methods. Cheers, Bob

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[GOODIE] instance analyser
by stephane ducasse 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

from preamble: "Change Set: instance analyser Date: 31 December 2001 Author: stephane ducasse A simple tool sorting the classes according to the number of instances they have currently in the image. Try: InstanceAnalyser new fromClassNames: #(Array Collection String) ; dumpToTranscript or InstanceAnalyser new collectData inspect (take some minutes) It would be great to have a user interface but I do not know how to that in Squeak. "!

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A simple but intriguing analysing snippet
by Stephane Ducasse 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

Hi It is always fun to see how we can rapidly build some query to understand better Smalltalk. The following script (which takes a while) sorts all the classes by the number of instances they have in the image....The results are certainly interesting for some of you. Have fun | classes classByInstanceNumber | classes := OrderedCollection new: Metaclass instanceCount. Object withAllSubclasses do: [:each | (each isKindOf: Metaclass) ifFalse: [classes add: each ]]. classByInstanceNumber := SortedCollection sortBlock: [:a :b | a value> b value]. 'Analysing...' displayProgressAt: Sensor cursorPoint from: 0 to: classes size during: [:bar | classes doWithIndex: [:each :i | classByInstanceNumber add: (each name -> each instanceCount). bar value: i]]. classByInstanceNumber inspect. classByInstanceNumber I'm wondering why we do not have better analysis tools in Smalltalk. With all this power available. Stef

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[ENH] FileContentsBrowseVersions
by Joshua Gargus 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

from preamble: "Change Set: FileContentsBrowseVersions Date: 30 December 2001 Author: Joshua Gargus FileContentsBrowsers could not find the versions of a method that had once existed, but had subsequently been removed from the system. However, this feature did exist in ChangeSorters. This ChangeSet adds the above behavior to FileContentsBrowsers, following the lead of ChangeSorter>>browseVersions. This is useful, for instance, in bringing an old changeset up to date by checking that all of its methods are still relevant."!

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