Smalltalk version

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Fri Apr 7 06:36:12 UTC 2006


Hi Roel

On 6 avr. 06, at 15:07, Roel Wuyts wrote:

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

Welcome back!
>
> 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 ?

Indeed for compatibility this can be cheap





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