Squeak-dev September 2008

squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

120 participants
118 discussions

Possible approaches for rendering in Morphic 3
by Juan Vuletich 08 Sep '08

08 Sep '08

Hi Folks, I've added this to my web: http://www.jvuletich.org/RenderingApproaches.html . It is about the different approaches for rendering of morphs for Morphic 3. This is the problem I'm dealing with now, so I'd appreciate any ideas or pointers. Cheers, Juan Vuletich

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Re: Squeak release team meeting 3
by Edgar 08 Sep '08

08 Sep '08

On Mar 12, 2008, at 4:32 PM, Matthew Fulmer wrote: > Edgar, Pavel, can you make the time, or should I > reschedule? Still off the web. I writing this responses off line and sending from borrowed computers. Cable guys scheduled my connection fpr 19/3/08, but friends are saying they only come and so some check, not sure my web connection is ready. I try to go to some cafe or "telecentro", but not sure if I could connect with Skype. Maybe I can find a place to put some Squeak image and do by IRC. Edgar

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3.10 is done
by Ralph Johnson 08 Sep '08

08 Sep '08

3.10 is done. It has been stable for a long time, and Edgar was just waiting for me to write a welcome screen. I've done that, so he can make a final image. The thing that we did that I like the best is making Package Universe prominent. While not perfect, it has worked well. The thing that disappoints me the most is that there are still a few tests that are not green. It looks like a committee has formed to work on the next release, and I wish them the best. I want to thank Edgar for all the hard work he did on 3.10. He did almost all the work, and did an excellent job. -Ralph Johnson

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Re: [squeak-dev] Using V8 for other languages
by David Griswold 08 Sep '08

08 Sep '08

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 7:56 AM, Dan Ingalls <Dan(a)squeakland.org> wrote: > David Griswold <david.griswold.256(a)gmail.com> wrote... > > > - Given who the developers are, and with Google behind it, it will be > the fastest JavaScript VM for a long time to come. > > > There's no doubt that V8 puts us on a new plateau, and the V8 team is good, > and that the further attention being put on multiprocessing and security are > critical. However VMs are not black magic, and you might be interested to > read some comparisons with TraceMonkey... > > > http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/09/tracemonkey_ > update.html > > One thing is clear: JavaScript *is* the assembly language of the Internet, > at least for a few years now. > > - Dan > Yes, it's becoming clear that V8 doesn't do anything that radically new or magical, and that it was specifically designed for JavaScript, not as any kind of universal dynamic language VM. I'm especially disappointed at Eliot's observation that it doesn't have a bytecode intermediate form, although they may do mixed-mode execution by first interpreting the AST. I'm not sure that the tracemonkey benchmarks are very definitive, but at the least it seems like V8 isn't blowing everything else away. But you are right; at least now that there are multiple fast JavaScript implementations, a lot more stuff will target it. -Dave

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Re: The Squeak Random Number Generator
by Jerome Peace 08 Sep '08

08 Sep '08

[squeak-dev] The Squeak Random Number Generator *** >Jim Rosenberg jr at amanue.com >Sun Sep 7 02:45:41 UTC 2008 wrote: > > >I'm getting very queasy feelings about Random. Good. Best thing to do with feelings like that is write sunit tests. Random will either pass them or reveal its limitations. Then you will know and the queasy feelings will go away replaced by feelings of certainty one way or the other. There are several things Random is known to fail at. It silently accepts out of range seeds. Then it will return out of range fp fractions for a while. Try a printit on: Random new seed: 24 factorial ; next . It will also only choose odd large Integers. This is being tracked on mantis: http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=7142 LargerInteger>>atRandom produces insufficient random bits See the report for more info and a smoke test. The other danger with Random is that it can get used in ways that are not appropriate for it. It essentially cycles thru only 2**31-1 values which #next returns as a fraction. The fp numbers have 53 bit mantissas and it is easy to assume the fractions have a 53 bit resolution. Which of course would be incorrect. So #getInt: for ints greater than 2**32 would leave out some choices. For ints less than that many would not have a strictly even chance of being picked. Think about: gen := Random new . gen getInt: 3 * ( 2 raisedTo: 30 ) . A third of possible choices would be twice as likely as the others two thirds. Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace > ><...> ***

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Making a better Compiler for all
by Igor Stasenko 08 Sep '08

08 Sep '08

Hello folks, during my visit at ESUG i had a conversation with Stephane, about different things, one of them is to make a better and cleaner compiler implementation. Current compiler code contains a lot of hacks and to be fair, is not a best example of good smalltalk code. What i'm proposing, is to establish a comittee for designing a better smalltalk compiler , which will replace old one on all existing Squeak forks. I think comittee should collect & discuss all feature requests, which new compiler should have, and then we can implement it and include in every and all forks. It is also, IMO, would be a good to make compiler modular - put it as separate package and maintain it as separate fork-independent entity. This will ensure that all existing forks in future will use the same compiler as the rest. Which will make people's life much easier :) I hope with support of atomic loading (btw a new compiler is a good test-bed for atomic loading) we should be able to load it at will :) -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

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Execute on Launch?
by Jim Rosenberg 07 Sep '08

07 Sep '08

How do I get a method in one of my own classes to fire when Squeak first launches? -Thanks, Jim

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Using class indexes instead of reference in oop header (in COG)
by Igor Stasenko 07 Sep '08

07 Sep '08

Hi all, I wanted to ask Eliot about some details how he planning to use new object format in Cog. I think it may be interesting to others, so i posted it here. At ESUG, Eliot mentioned that new object format will be 64 bit (regadless of platform), and he will use a class indexes (pointing to entry in a global classes table) in header instead of direct class oop. Currently, in Squeak VM same principle is used for so-called compact classes, where in oop header is stored an index of compact classes array entry, which allowing to have a smallest possible oop header (32 bits). So, in Cog, to determine an oop class, first it reads an index from its header, and then reads a class oop from classes global table. But you need a reverse operation as well - translating class oop into index. Every time you doing #basicNew , or #primitiveChangeClass , you need to determine a class index by its oop value. So, the question is how this will be done? Also, some classes may die, and obviously VM needs to do a compaction of global classes table at some point, to prevent maintaining a big table where only few of entries is used. Suppose i created 1000+1 classes => each class gets own index in table. Then first 1000 classes is gone (when user uninstalling something). Now you having 1000 free entries in table. But last one is still in use, and if you want to make table more compact it would require to visit each instance of that class and set a new index value. -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

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[ANN] The SqueakLightII Chronicles
by Edgar J. De Cleene 06 Sep '08

06 Sep '08

People: I like to share the journey towards a complete system as my previous emails says. The image for developers, running on top of SqueakLightII.7201, runs his own site, wiki, etc, thanks Janko and Nico http://edgar.aidaweb.si:9999/blog/blog.html Here soon all you could read my "discoveries" . http://snipurl.com/q4ts shows the old original Spanish SqueakLightChronicles So all could know this not start yesterday. Final, a tribute to my partners in SmallBlog http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3437 (the old crhonicles was made in SmallBlog and run in a four years SqueakLihgt) * Avi Bryant * Blaine Buxton * Lukas Renggli * Mark Schwenk * Daniel Vainsencher And to Jim Benson the best team leader I have. Both old and new is running now, enjoy . Edgar

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BabyUML has reached its goal
by Trygve Reenskaug 06 Sep '08

06 Sep '08

The goal of the BabyUML project was to bridge the chasm between the code we write at compile time and the networks of communicating objects that do the work at runtime. The BabyIDE interactive development environment bridges this chasm . Its foundation is the new DCI paradigm, its key stone is a variant of the Traits stateless methods. Read the report and download the programs. You find all about it in the BabyIDE home page http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/themes/babyide/babyide-index.html <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/%7Etrygver/themes/babyide/babyide-index.html> Enjoy yourself while I'm relaxing in the mountains for the next seven days. --Trygve -- Trygve Reenskaug mailto: trygver(a)ifi.uio.no Morgedalsvn. 5A http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver N-0378 Oslo Tel: (+47) 22 49 57 27 Norway

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