Squeak-dev December 2007

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129 participants
144 discussions

Is SqueakSource as Monticello repository limited to open-source projects?
by itsme213 16 Dec '07

16 Dec '07

The main app I will work on is commercial. Is it still OK to use SqueakSource as my Monticello repository (there will be more than one of us)? Who pays for it (or, how do I pay for is :-)? And how secure is it? - Sophie

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accessing the stack
by Niko Matsakis 16 Dec '07

16 Dec '07

Is it possible to gain access to the current stack context (i.e., MethodContext or BlockContext) in Squeak? thanks, Niko

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weird breakage in 3.9. Am I in the Twilight Zone?
by Kragen Javier Sitaker 16 Dec '07

16 Dec '07

So I was playing with Squeak 3.9, walking through the stuff in Squeak By Example (which is terrific, by the way). Turns out StringTest>>#testIndexOf is failing, because it asserts that 'abc-' asWideString indexOfAnyOf: (CharacterSet newFrom: ' -0123456789') should be 4, and instead it's 0. Well, String>>#findFirstInString:inSet:startingAt: works by iterating over the string to find either an object in the set or the end of the string (literally, there are two tests in the whileTrue: condition) and then checking after the end of the loop to see if the loop counter got to the last character. Well, that approach is not going to work; it can't tell whether it got to the last character and then found that it was in the set, or instead it never found a character in the set. It's a little weird to have an obvious bug like that in a relatively fundamental method like that (is it some kind of prank?) but anyway, I fixed it (rather suboptimally) in the attached changeset, and now I get an error later on in StringTest>>#testIndexOf, namely that I can't make a CharacterSet newFrom: (String with: 811 asCharacter with: 812 asCharacter) because the CharacterSet's map is a 256-element ByteArray, and there ain't no position 812 in a 256-element ByteArray! Also, it's a little weird that the code is full of underscores rather than :='s, as if it hadn't been touched in five years or more, but the version browser (is that the right word?) says that it was modified in 4/10/2005, and shows no versions older than that. So what's going on? How did I end up running code that fails basic unit tests due to bugs that are obvious even to me? I don't know Smalltalk, so I think the obviousness of the bug owes more to the excellent debugging facilities and the nature of the bug than to my own abilities. I compiled the Squeak 3.9 virtual machine from sources according to Ian Piumarta's "instructions for the impatient" in README, on my fairly standard Debian Etch machine, and I'm running the Squeak3.9-final-7067.image from the Squeak web site. My machine has occasionally proven unreliable in the past (crashing kernel compiles and the like); could that somehow be related? Did some bit-flip send me into the Museum of Discarded Code That Never Worked? 'From Squeak3.9 of 7 November 2006 [latest update: #7067] on 15 December 2007 at 9:47:48 pm'! !String class methodsFor: 'primitives' stamp: 'kjs 12/15/2007 21:26'! findFirstInString: aString inSet: inclusionMap startingAt: start "Trivial, non-primitive version" | i stringSize ascii more | inclusionMap size ~= 256 ifTrue: [^ 0]. stringSize _ aString size. more _ true. i _ start - 1. [more and: [i + 1 <= stringSize]] whileTrue: [ i _ i + 1. ascii _ (aString at: i) asciiValue. more _ ascii < 256 ifTrue: [(inclusionMap at: ascii + 1) = 0] ifFalse: [true]. more ifFalse: [ ^ i ]. ]. ^ 0. ! !

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Squeak 3.10 - Syntax Error window
by Jerome Peace 16 Dec '07

16 Dec '07

Squeak 3.10 - Syntax Error window Hi Frank, How did you set your breakpoint. What did the code look like before and after. It looks like some how you interupted a line of code and the parser starting in the middle threw up its hands when it came upon an unmatched ")". :-) Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace *** >Squeaker squeakman at gmail.com >Sat Dec 15 14:43:36 UTC 2007 > >Hello, > >I am using Squeak 3.10 on a Windoze box. > >I have placed a break point in the code. When the break point is hit, I >get a "Syntax Error" window popping up. > >When I attempt to step over the break point I get a new "Syntax Error" >window with each attempt to step thru the code. > >The "Syntax Error" window contains the following text: > >---- start of text ---- >digitLength - 8Nothing more expected ->) max: 0). > nScaled _ (numerator bitShift: nScaleBits negated) asFloat. > > "Scale the denominator the same way." > dScaleBits _ 8 * ((denominator digitLength - 8) max: 0). > dScaled _ (denominator bitShift: dScaleBits negated) asFloat. > > "Divide the scaled numerator and denominator to make the >right mantissa, then scale to correct the exponent." > ^ (nScaled / dScaled) timesTwoPower: (nScaleBits - dScaleBits). > >---- end of text ---- > >What is this "Syntax Error" window trying to tell me? How does one use it? > >Thanks, >Frank *** ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

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Squeak Experts Near Portland Oregon
by Robert F. Scheer 15 Dec '07

15 Dec '07

Hi all, I'm the President of the local robotics club, the Portland Area Robotics Society and a fairly new squeaker. Jon Hylands posted a little bit of Squeak hype from me awhile ago. My personal robot development is coming along pretty well and I'm still quite interested in this language. Still a raw newbie though. Now we're starting a rather big project within our club that we hope will establish a very popular open-source outdoor robot kit for $500. By popular, it all depends on how well it performs, but it might end up with thousands in the field. It's performance goal is to be the best RoboMagellan robot to date so it must rapidly navigate on an unmarked course of around a mile in length and use vision to locate and touch (softly) a few orange traffic cones. This has historically been a tough bag of requirements and we'd like to catalyze a breakthrough entry point to the hobby. Who knows. I was thinking it would be a good idea to use Squeak for this project but it will be a tough sell because literally nobody knows anybody who uses Squeak for robots. The opinion ranges from mostly totally ignorant to negative. Only one well-known roboticist in our sphere of communication uses Squeak and that's Jon Hylands. Lots of people use assembly language on microcomputers. Most people use C/C++ and Java I think. Is there anyone expert enough to give an interesting talk here in Portland that would be directed at people with widely varying programming backgrounds all interested in robot development. We'd really appreciate it!!! Thanks. - Robert Scheer

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Callbacks in Squeak
by Conrad Pöpke 15 Dec '07

15 Dec '07

Hallo everyone, we currently try to integrate a C libary into Squeak. It uses callbacks and I tried to find some information about callbacks in Squeak. It seems, that callbacks are supported in the Squeak VM. But my problem is, that I found no examples which show me in detail how to use them. I only found this post from Andrea Raab: 1. Set up a pool of *callback* functions that are varargs based. This avoids the need to generate *callbacks* stubs (which may be preferrable on some platforms but it doesn't matter). These functions need to "put away" the stack pointer for the image to use, signal an FFI semaphore and *callback* into the interpreter. 2. When the *callback* is picked up in the image, the image needs to call a set of support functions to take the arguments correctly from the stack. This would be based on some ffi spec. 3. Once all the arguments are picked up, you run your *callback* code. 4. To return, you need to call another set of support functions for storing the return value and return from the *callback*. Maybe someone can help me ? Best regards Conrad

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Squeak 3.10 - Syntax Error window
by Squeaker 15 Dec '07

15 Dec '07

Hello, I am using Squeak 3.10 on a Windoze box. I have placed a break point in the code. When the break point is hit, I get a "Syntax Error" window popping up. When I attempt to step over the break point I get a new "Syntax Error" window with each attempt to step thru the code. The "Syntax Error" window contains the following text: ---- start of text ---- digitLength - 8Nothing more expected ->) max: 0). nScaled _ (numerator bitShift: nScaleBits negated) asFloat. "Scale the denominator the same way." dScaleBits _ 8 * ((denominator digitLength - 8) max: 0). dScaled _ (denominator bitShift: dScaleBits negated) asFloat. "Divide the scaled numerator and denominator to make the right mantissa, then scale to correct the exponent." ^ (nScaled / dScaled) timesTwoPower: (nScaleBits - dScaleBits). ---- end of text ---- What is this "Syntax Error" window trying to tell me? How does one use it? Thanks, Frank

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Image setup question
by Amos 15 Dec '07

15 Dec '07

Hi all, Although I've been developing in (VisualWorks) Smalltalk for a number of years, I'm an absolute newbie when it comes to Squeak. I downloaded and played around with Squeak 3.9 recently (because I was curious about Seaside) and was surprised to see how far Squeak has come since I last had a look a few years ago. Anyway, I've read a few helpfiles/wikis/tutorials/blogs/etc., saw several images available for download with several different browsers and tools loaded, and read about a few more that I haven't been able to find/load (OmniBrowser, Cees' RefractoringBrowser, Ramon's SentorsaBrowser). So I was wondering what you guys would recommend as a base image and if you could point me to the right place for finding out how best to go about loading tools. (I've downloaded a few packages with the universe package browser, which was fairly intuitive, but couldn't find several things I was after - should I use that MonticelloBrowser instead? What's the difference?) Playing around with a few things, I missed the option to "dive into" an element from an Inspector and then "pop" back out to the previously inspected object(s), so I modified the Inspector class to add those options. Is something like that useful enough to submit the code somewhere for others to load? Or am I re-inventing the wheel and someone's already done that? Any help or pointers where to read up on this stuff would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Amos

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Re: I want to sign license agreement
by Yoshiki Ohshima 14 Dec '07

14 Dec '07

> Isn't signing a license agreement for new contributions overkill? Most > other open source projects require nothing like that - just an > electronic text clearly stating the license that the author is using is > often enough. Yes, there was a discussion among the board members on this issue. I agree with that we have to get the signature from new contributors, if we put a notice on squeak.org basically saying "don't contribute code if you don't license it under MIT." At this point, we are hearing suggestions from a lawyer at Conservation, and Craig has been talking with them. (Thank you Craig!) -- Yoshiki

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#13238-Smalltalk Consultant - Contract 4 months
by Brad Fuller 14 Dec '07

14 Dec '07

Pass along job posting: Contact email is at bottom ------------------------------------------------------ Located in Newark, NJ. Small Talk Consultant Newark, NJ 4 month Contract Job description: * Support VisualAge Smalltalk(3) * Use Programming Languages(3) * Apply Knowledge of Business-IT Requirements(3) * Use Library Management Tools(3) * Use Application Development Methodologies & Tools(3) * Understand Data Models(3) * Use Full Life Cycle(3) * Use Applications Strategies for Maintenance(3) * Develop Program Specifications(3) * Perform Application Testing Activities(3) * Use Test Tools Knowledge(3) Required skills are: Visual Age for Smalltalk--versions 3 thru 6. Integration with Excel, ENVY, XML, DB2 and Data Junction. If you are qualified, available, interested, planning to make a change, or know of a friend who might have the required qualifications and interest, please email me with your most recent resume, even if we have spoken recently about a different position. If you do respond via e-mail please include a daytime phone number so I can reach you. In considering candidates, time is of the essence, so please respond ASAP. Thank you. Sincerely yours, Robert Taylor Algomod Technologies Corp. robert.taylor(a)algomod.com

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