Smalltalk version

Roel Wuyts roel.wuyts at ulb.ac.be
Thu Apr 6 13:07:00 UTC 2006


Hello,

long time no see :-)  I'm doing things in Squeak again, so I'll try  
to follow the list once more...

One of the first things I want to mention is the demise of the method  
'version' on Smalltalk. It was actually decided at some point in time  
by Smalltalk environments to implement this method to return some  
description of the environment (the format of the version string was  
not standardized; go figure). This method exists in nearly all  
Smalltalk environments and makes it easy to write generic Smalltalk  
code with some environment-specific extensions for which one wants to  
check.

I use this, for example in RoelTyper, to check some Squeak or VW  
specific things. But now this method is deprecated, and instead of  
being able to do:
	Smalltalk version
I would now have to do:
	SystemVersion current version

The problem is that the first expressions works in nearly any  
Smalltalk environment, while the second one works only in Squeak,  
which defeats the whole purpose of this method! So I will have to  
write the following:

	^(Smalltalk at: #SystemVersion ifAbsent: [^Smalltalk version])  
current version

My proposal: please do not deprecate the 'version' method on  
Smalltalk, but implement it as:

version

	SystemVersion current version


Any opinions ?

--
Roel



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list