Squeak-dev September 2004

squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

150 participants
437 discussions

Mantis: New Categories
by Marcus Denker 15 Nov '04

15 Nov '04

Hi, There is now a new top-level categories on Mantis for reports that are about bugs that are in packages not part of Squeak full (e.g. connectors, Jabber, Whisker). The categorie is "Squeak ext packages". If someone needs a new sub-category for a project, please send a mail and I add it. For the "Squeak" Main category, we can add sub-categories on demand. (e.g for all packages in full). If the "Squeak" category gets to full at some point, we might splitt it in "Squeak Image" and "Squeak official Packages" (e.g. Yaxo, Monticello, Scamper). Marcus

2 1

[ANN][SM] TimeZoneDatabase V1.2.2 released
by David T. Lewis 30 Oct '04

30 Oct '04

TimeZoneDatabase V1.2.2 Integration of the time zone database with Squeak Kernel-Chronology. Version 1.2.2 adds class TimeZoneProxy, which provides TimeZone protocol for the local time zone transform in a TimeZoneDatabase. This permits methods such as DateAndTime class>>now and Time class>>now to obtain the correct time zone offset for any PointInTime, with compensation for daylight savings time and other peculiarities. Rather than relying on a static definition of the time zone, expressions such as 'DateAndTime now' and 'Time now' will perform a dynamic lookup into the time zone database to determine the time zone offset. When daylight savings time takes effect, the time zone database will automatically compensate for the change. Also, time zone offsets can now be expressed as Durations, as in: TimeZoneDatabase systemDatabase durationFrom: 'America/Detroit' to: 'Canada/Newfoundland' ==> -0:01:30:00 Here is how to load a time zone database and set the default time zone on a Squeak image running on a typical Linux box: 1) Build a system database from files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory (a typical location for a Unix/Linux system). TimeZoneDatabase buildSystemDatabaseForSqueak 2) Look for a suitable time zone to use. For example, if you live in Detroit, Michigan in the USA, you can find several valid time zone entries for Detroit by evaluating the following expression: TimeZoneDatabase systemDatabase grepFor: 'Detroit' 3) Select a time zone to use as your default. For example, if you have decided to use 'America/Detroit', tell the database that this should be the default: TimeZoneDatabase systemDatabase defaultLocation: 'America/Detroit' 4) Now tell Squeak to use this as its dynamic time zone setting. TimeZoneProxy setDynamicLocalTransform: TimeZoneDatabase systemDatabase defaultTimeZone abbreviation: 'EST' - Dave

1 1

[ENH] overlappingPlayer
by gaelli＠emergent.de 09 Oct '04

09 Oct '04

from preamble: "Change Set: overlappingPlayer Date: 6 January 2004 Author: Markus Gaelli I showed a good friend of mine (a teacher) how to program space invaders completely with Etoys. You can try out the result here: http://www.squeakland.org/project.jsp?http://www.emergent.de/pub/smallta lk/squeak/projects/petersInvaders.003.pr We used the common seesColor trick for the collision-detection, but we found it difficult to determine which UFO was hit by our laser, so I leveraged the existing Smalltalk Method called Morph >> morphsInFrontOverlapping: to a tile in miscellaneous called: overlappingPlayer in Etoys. Did we overlook some other way to find out with Etoys which of the UFOS have been hit by our shot? If not, should be put it to miscellaneous? Is it a problem that we only return one of possible many overlapped players? Is there a better name than overlappingPlayer? Should I send the changeset? Done... :-) "!

2 1

Relative independence of odbs: IndexedCollection, the update problem
by Sebastian Sastre 08 Oct '04

08 Oct '04

Hi all, I'm trying to make a solution for the following problem: "Minimize the impact of the software you make in a future change of the ODB schema." Until now, I've found this specifical features needed (perhaps you can review/add more): Requeriment: To have solved in one place a big ammount of persisted objects, that could be accessed efficiently by different "attributes" (supporting wilcards), in a simultaneous, sustainable, transparent and easily maintainable way. All this together. 1. Big ammount of persistent objects. At first view any collection could have them, but as they are to be persistent, they need to be on an apropiated support. A BTree or TSTree satisfies this requirement. 2. Accessed efficiently. Those trees access their content very efficiently. Specially TSTree for wilcarded text searches. 3. Different attributes. For each attribute that the persistent objects is wanted to be searcheable, it's needed one of those trees. Let me call this indexing. So, this trees wil have in their keys, the values (probably restricted only to integers and strings) of the "attribute" of the objects stored, and in their values the objects itself. A tree for each indexed "attribute". This collection of trees may have the know how to maintain them and hold them. I called it IndexedCollection. 4. Wildcards search support. The TSTree supports wilcarded strings searches. Perhaps BTree too, in near future. In OmniBase, any ODBTree also support this. 5. In simultaneous way. This IndexedCollection may have a friendly protocol for adding index, removing index, and querying on any index at any time. 6. In Sustainable way. The changes of an element of the collection, should be updated in the respective index if matters (the update problem). In other words: the index should allways have it's keys synchronized with the objects attributes values. 7. In transparent way. That the elements should not perceive that they are persistent. I mean, they should not need to have any method nor code to update the indexes or anything related to the persistent schema. 8. Easily maintainable. That one can add or remove indexes as one needs. 9. All together. To have all this togethter in one place: a special collection that support all this features at one time, here I called it IndexedCollection. If you know Magma I'm talking about serveral of the MagmaCollection's features, plus some others like having independence of the persistent schema itself. It's some kind of generalization that will be useful to you to develop software that need persistence, minimizing the impact of (for ANY reason) a change of the odb schema/vendor. The main problem right now it's the update problem (point 6). When anyone changes the value of an indexed attribute of a persistent object, it should exist some kind of triggering mechanism, so the IndexedCollection could tell to the corresponding index, to update it's key and value corresponding to the mutating element. Hypothesis: what about making some kind of proxy or wrapper to every element you add to this collection, to monitor (via DNU) every message sent to the monitored element, and when appropiate, trigger the change of the target attributes, so the collection could update it's indexes? In that case, we have to solve the additional problem of the change of domain: the ODB domain to VM domain, and vice versa. That will drop the identity of the objects, including elements, wrappers, the hooked events, and the collection itself. So here is the problem. I'm thinking about it for several days without enlightenment yet. Any idea to solve this? Any better idea/strategy? best regards, Sebastián Sastre HYPERLINK "mailto:ssastre@seaswork.com.ar"ssastre(a)seaswork.com.ar HYPERLINK "http://www.seaswork.com.ar/"www.seaswork.com.ar --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.767 / Virus Database: 514 - Release Date: 21/09/2004

4 13

[ENH] shadowed-mir
by denker＠iam.unibe.ch 06 Oct '04

06 Oct '04

md: reposting as an [ENH] from preamble: "Change Set: shadowed-mir Date: 17 January 2004 Author: Michael Rueger Makes the recompile provide sueful information about where a variable is shadowed."!

2 1

vm: problem with unix build process
by Martin Kuball 05 Oct '04

05 Oct '04

Hi! I'm trying to build a new vm from the cvs for debian linux. The problem is that the external plugins are missing the ".so" ending. Any idea how to solve this? Martin

4 5

About lonnnnng tests
by stéphane ducasse 05 Oct '04

05 Oct '04

Hi I'm creating some tests for the decompiler (inspired by the one in SystemDictionary) and they are realllllly slow. So I'm thinking to create some kinds of SlowTestCase that could be turned off/on on demand. But I would like to know if someone already proposed a solution to that problem. Stef

6 8

About slugginess of 3.8 unstable
by stéphane ducasse 05 Oct '04

05 Oct '04

Diego I found that in the 6272 image (may be before) the UI is reacting more slowly than with previous 3.8 unstable images. Does anybody else see that? Diego have you noticed something too? I'm on mac. Stef

6 7

3.6 full packages?
by Andreas Raab 04 Oct '04

04 Oct '04

Hi Guys, I just ran into a very unfortunate situation: I have an image which has been built on top of 3.6 basic but some later code (written against 3.6 too) requires (a variety of) the full packages. My problem: I have no idea which versions of the packages at SM have been used when 3.6-full was built, neither do I know if their latest version will work with 3.6 (highly unlikely if they have been touched at all in the mean time) nor do I know where I would find those packages, nor do I know how to "extract" them (which may not be possible for all of them) from a 3.6 full image. Help! If you happen to know which versions went into 3.6 and if you happen to have a copy of said package please let me know. Cheers, - Andreas PS. God, how I wish I had a cached version of all of the packages that went into 3.6 full ... I wonder if we shouldn't ship the packages which have been loaded in full as "loadable" (e.g., cached) with the basic versions?!

8 18

Interesting idea
by stéphane ducasse 04 Oct '04

04 Oct '04

Event based debugger to debug backwards.... http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.SE/0310016

2 1

Jump to page: