[Vm-dev] [Pharo-dev] Squeak and Pharo speed differences

[Shaping]

Why can’t the OSVM be a single, unforked, maxed-out VM with all the best and fastest features working in Squeak and Pharo?   Why did the split happen?  

 

In very general terms, the fork was due to their being Group A wanting to go one direction 
and Group B wanting to go in a different direction. i.e....

B says "We want to do X".

A says "We don't want to do X." 

B says "We really want to do X."

A says "Definitely no."

B says "We really want to do X and actually we're doing it over here."

 

Lol  Thanks for the explanation.  That’s more or less what I thought.  

 

But can’t the differences be setup at config-your-environ time instead of build time, when the task is heavier and slower?

 

In essence, Squeak considered backward compatibility of prime importance including the code of some applications that had become entangled in the main code base.    Pharo wanted to "clean the code" by disentangling and stripping those parts.

 

I like disentangling and modularizing.   I suppose this is a universal like.

 

  They also wanted to move to a reproducible-build-system where each change "bootstrapped" a nightly image from an empty file,

 

I like this too.

 

whereas Squeak continues to use a "continuous evolution" model.

 

Don’t both groups want the automatic building and testing the Consortium is talking about recently?

 

I’m not sure I understand how “continuous evolution” works.  Sounds like there is lots of wiggle room in that idea.  Don’t we need some structure?  We seem to be getting that in Pharo.  

 

I’m not sure about Squeak.  The GUI tools/menus still feel hodgepodge (much nicer, but still not well organized) 16 years later.  I used it between 2002 to 2004, and then again just a few days ago.  I like the faster debugger and the flat GUIs, but I don’t need Morphic to have those dev-tool GUIs.  I’d prefer to rework the GUIs with Spec2/GTK3, and keep the flat, clean, button-packed look with some improvements (like the new Spec2 selection highlighting pattern, which is very nice).  The rest of Squeak seems messy.

 

I do very much like the technical, concrete feel of Squeak’s details about the VM.  That reminds me of old times and why I got involved in computers, and it supports my current interest in VM parallelization.  Those VM details need a somewhat different shape/presentation.  There is a beauty in Squeak, but the eviron still feels a bit rough.  

 

For example, why aren’t all those preferences in a tree where you can actually find things because they are categorized.  It’s a big list.  That seems very strange in 2020.  Why don’t Squeak folks borrow the Pharo Settings GUI idea, and implement that in Morphic, as they like?  I thought more would have happened in the Squeak GUI in 16 years, but I’ve not seen all of 5.3 yet.  I’m still poking around.  I suppose most of the improvements are in the VM, which I imagine absorbs most of the group’s energy.

 

And there are more reasons I probably not aware of.

Here is the Pharo Vision document circa 2012 which inspired me  https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01879346/document

 

Thank you.  I will read it.   Is the Consortium updating that doc?  There was a doc recently from Stef that looks like it belongs in there, merged somehow.

 

It looks like a bad use of energy in a community that is small and needs to use its human resources efficiently.

 

Trying to go one way and dealing with continual pushback and conflict around that is also bad energy.

 

Agreed.  I don’t understand the pushback because I don’t understand Squeak folks’ objection to rigorous, systematic, automatic testing and disentangling/modularizing of frameworks.  They are probably fine with all that.  Do Squeak folks have a document that defines “continuous development.”  I know that VM testing is automated.  I don’t see how the objectives are so different, at least on the automation front.  Everyone seems to agree that CI is good.

 

 

 I want to help, but need to port first from VW, and I’m trying to choose Squeak or Pharo.  Both have speed problems.  Squeak has fewer, but Pharo could be much faster with broad use of Spec2.

 

Would reintegrating Squeak and Pharo development make more sense?

 

I think that is not likely.  Both continue to have different goals.  And a significant area where they are likely to continue to diverge is the graphics.  Squeak is likely(?) to stay with Morphic a long while Pharo intends to dump Morphic.

 

I never liked the halo thing.  It’s okay.  It seemed/seems too busy and distracting.  I think Morphic and the “too many cooks” problem is why I broke off in 2004.   

 

If we are fully modular, and you love Morphic, and want to live there mentally and visually, all the time, then load the Morphic package into the new universal OpenSmalltalk.  Have all your GUIs built with Morphic.  Have cute little morphs stuck here and there.  Knock yourself out.  Don’t like Morphic?  Don’t think it’s cute?  Load the more business-like-but-not-boring Spec2.  I don’t see an insurmountable technical problem here. 

 

 

This is one of the reasons that Spec was created - to be independence layer. 
IIUC in Pharo 9 Spec is already working on top of a GTK3 backend.

 

Yes, the Spec2 Launcher is inspiringly snappy, modulo the text-selection slowness problem, which is everywhere in Pharo and Squeak.  I’ve mentioned this a few times recently—of all the goofy things to prevent a port from VW…..Okay, that and Pharo’s slow debugger.  Two things keep me out of Pharo/Squeak.  I don’t love VW.   I tolerate it really well.  That’s different.  :)

 

wrt the VM, Pharo want to remove all native-windowing from the VM, so that window opening 

is controlled from the Image via FFI rather than the VM. 

 

I agree with the objective.  

 

This conflicts with Squeak's backward comparability goals.

 

Okay, this is the real problem.

 

So there is a ton of old Squeak code that no one is willing to rework in order to be compatible with the new vision for native-windowing independence.  Perhaps someone can give more details on that old code.

I suppose many Squeak folks bemoan all the extra work needed for a recoding.  Is this still really an issue?  Maybe very little of that old code is still being used in business-critical ways.  The need for a recoding may not be the big issue it once was. 

 

This change would effectively create more devs willing to work on any problem.  This change would also prevent fracturing of feature-sets across the two Smalltalks from happening in the first place.

 

I personally had the inspiration that Squeak might be based off the Pharo Headless Bootstrap,

but in the end I didn't find the time to push this further.

 

That’s a very good idea.  Why don’t all the Squeak folks work on it?  Are you the only one pushing for this?

 

 

 Squeak and Pharo GUI styles are different.  So be it.  Can’t the GUI frameworks and conventions be separated in the same image, and configured as desired in GUI sections of Settings?

 

Pharo currently can use both Morphic and GTK3 for its GUI backend.
Possibly the GTK3 backend would provide some speed benefit (??)

 

It’s a good question.  Is the core Morphic issue whether GTK3 can render non-rectangular shapes efficiently?  There’s a lot of that in Morphic.  I suppose it’s the main concern.  Even if Morphic relies on special drawing primitives, they can go in a lib and be accessed via FFI.

 

Shaping

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