Squeak-dev September 2006

squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

169 participants
296 discussions

The success of Grants
by Ron Teitelbaum 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Hello all, I received a reply from Ton Roosendaal who runs the Blender Foundation. He shared his experiences with grants, and said I could share his thoughts with you. I agree with Ton that if we are going to fund projects that a professional atmosphere, proper administration and management, will help to achieve better results. We might consider funding research projects administered by a University, or managed by a company. Ron Teitelbaum From: Ton Roosendaal Hi, From Blender Foundation experience: We've participated twice in the Google Summer of Code, grants for students to work for two months on a coding project. Results of this is very mixed; it mostly depends on the professional attitude of a student. A downside of this approach is that it divides volunteers/hobbiests a bit... students get paid for what others do for free. That's why it is perceived like a lottery; some people just got the luck to be granted. We've also hired a couple of times active volunteers to do servicing (website, development support). In almost all cases, the contributions they did while getting paid was less (quantitive as well as in quality) than what they did for free. In 2004, a student of the Amsterdam University graduated on a research on this topic, the results of a survey she did in the Blender community is summarized here: http://download.blender.org/documentation/bc2004/Martine_Aalbers/ results-summary.pdf I've asked her to also look at how financial rewards would work in our projects. Her conclusion was that this has the danger of diminishing motivation. In scientific research on other communities, this is called "crowding out". Her entire paper is unfortunately only available in Dutch: http://download.blender.org/documentation/bc2004/Martine_Aalbers/ MartineAalbers.pdf As an alternative, I then decided to experiment with another approach. This became the "Orange Open Movie" project, which has resulted in the 3D animation short "Elephants Dream". The target was to establish a temporal but highly professional studio in Amsterdam, and invite key members of the community to come over to work for half a year on realizing a movie short. That project worked out great in all aspects. It helped Blender development, it helped our 'brand', it increased commitment from the active volunteers as well as from professionals. This leads to a separation of two groups of contributors to Blender; - volunteers: people who contribute to Blender without getting paid. - professionals: people who contribute to Blender as part of their daytime job. It's important to realize that 'volunteers' still can be highly professional in their contributions. For example a 3D developer working for company XXX can contribute to Blender in his spare time still. This seperation is not about quality of work, but about differencing ways for how to support contributors. My current conclusion is that - when money gets involved - it's important to participate in an existing professional environment, or to create one yourself (like we did for studio Orange), or to help people to setup a business to become 'professional'. We didn't give out large grants yet, but if we will do I would look at sponsoring companies/organizations to hire Blender developers/artists for projects. For volunteers, what works quite well is more incidental support: - sponsored hardware (we got boards from ATI and Nvidia for example) - small grants for creating documentation (or helping creating books) - organize events, and give volunteers expenses coverage, free access, drinks/dinners - art/movie festivals with prizes -Ton-

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The Weekly Squeak is back!
by Giovanni Corriga 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Hi all, we've finally decided to give another go at the Weekly Squeak newsletter. TWS has now become a blog, which at the moment is hosted by wordpress.com . We will be posting news during the whole week, so be sure either to check the website everyday ( http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/ ) or to subscribe to the RSS feed ( http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/feed/ ). Every monday we'll post a summary of the news of the past week. We'll start this new run of The Weekly Squeak with a nice surprise: live reports from the ESUG 2006 conference! Ciao, Giovanni

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[BUG ]Repeatable Mac Crash Scenario With Squeak In A Web Browser
by Laurence Rozier 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Hi, Once a project has been loaded into an image running in a web browser, playing a SampledSound will result in a crash when the window(or tab) is closed. This happens repeatedly under OS/X 10.4.7 and OS/X 10.3.9 using either Firefox or Safari. In the case of Firefox the crash is fatal - the entire machine locks up! Under Safari, you just get an application unexpectedly quit message. At first I thought it had something to do with the project I created that played a sound upon loading, but it happens with every project I've tried and will happen with any attempt to play a SampledSound e.g. evaluating (SampleSound soundNamed: 'camera') play will do the trick. I tried to submit a bug report but my account appears to be blocked for some reason so I'm reporting it here. Regards, Laurence

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REMINDER: Squeak Chat Thursday September 7th 16:00 GMT
by Ken Causey 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Just a reminder that the next Squeak Chat will take place between 16:00 (4 PM) and 20:00 (8 PM) GMT Thursday September 7th, 2006. As usual we will meet in #squeak on irc.freenode.net. More information about the #squeak IRC channel can be found at http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/7.html This is a good time to contribute to the development of Squeak by participating in the Harvesting Process. One of the main ways to contribute is by Reviewing submitted fixes and enhancements. For information about the Harvesting Process see http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3152 If you have the time please attend and work toward the future of Squeak. The next seven chats are scheduled for 20:00 (08:00 PM) GMT Monday September 11, 2006 00:00 (12:00 AM) GMT Saturday September 16, 2006 04:00 (04:00 AM) GMT Wednesday September 20, 2006 08:00 (08:00 AM) GMT Sunday September 24, 2006 12:00 (12:00 PM) GMT Thursday September 28, 2006 16:00 (04:00 PM) GMT Monday October 02, 2006 20:00 (08:00 PM) GMT Friday October 06, 2006

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newProcess debugging help
by Ron Teitelbaum 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Hello all, Is there a way to know that a method is being simulated in a debugger? I would like to have two different paths thisContext isDebugging ifTrue: [aBlock value] ifFalse: [aBlock newProcess]. so that I can debug the new process without having to change the code and remove the threading. Or is there a better way to step through code that is executing in a different thread? It would be nice if when the debugger hit a new thread it would simply open up a new debugger on that thread, then you could keep stepping through either debugger. Thanks, Ron Teitelbaum

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Pragma Syntax Checking
by Ron Teitelbaum 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

I ran into a problem with Pragmas and Monticello. If I define a pragma as: <asn1FieldMutator: 'signatureAlgorithm' class: CertificateSigAlgorithmANS1> It works fine as long as CertificateSigAlgorithmASN1 is defined. When loading from Monticello the order is now critical to getting the pragma reloaded. If the classes are loaded out of order the loading stops with: <asn1FieldMutator: 'signatureAlgorithm' class: Literal constant expected ->CertificateSigAlgorithmANS1> This must be a problem for other classes in Monticello loading. Does anyone know how Monticello handles undefined class references, or is this a problem with pragma syntax checking? Thanks for your help! Ron Teitelbaum

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Squeak distribution contains useless __MACOSX folders
by astares＠gmx.de 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

Yes - there are people out there using Squeak on other platforms than Mac! And it's really annoying to remove these __MACOSX folders after extracting a distribution ZIP. So can we just include the usefull things in the distribution like any other open source project? see http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?id=4718 Thanks Torsten -- "Feel free" – 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat ... Jetzt GMX TopMail testen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail

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[BUG] Not possible to add instvars in Squeak39g 7055
by astares＠gmx.de 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

See: http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?id=4717 Bye Torsten -- "Feel free" – 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat ... Jetzt GMX TopMail testen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail

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Collection standard methods
by Ron Teitelbaum 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

Hello all, I have some of my own collection methods that I have to keep remembering not to use for shared code. What I need is a standard method for my Collection >> explode: aDelimiter method Collection >> explode: aDelimiter "explode the collection into a collection of collections broken by aDelimiter" "(#(#(1 2) #(3 4)) mergeDelimited: Character tab ) explode: Character tab = an OrderedCollection(#(1 2) #(3 4)) 'abcdef' explode: 'cd' = an OrderedCollection('ab' 'ef')" | resultCollection starting aDelimiterPosition aDelimiterSize | self ifEmpty: [^self]. resultCollection _ OrderedCollection new. aDelimiterSize _ aDelimiter isCollection ifTrue: [aDelimiter size] ifFalse: [1]. starting _ 1. [aDelimiterPosition _ aDelimiter isCollection ifTrue: [self indexOfSubCollection: aDelimiter startingAt: starting] ifFalse: [self indexOf: aDelimiter startingAt: starting ifAbsent: [0]]. aDelimiterPosition > 0] whileTrue: [ resultCollection add: (self copyFrom: starting to: aDelimiterPosition - 1). starting _ aDelimiterPosition + aDelimiterSize. ]. resultCollection add: (self copyFrom: starting to: self size). ^resultCollection For reference: Collection >> mergeDelimited: anObject "return to reciever a collection with each element concatenated to remove imbeded collections" "#(#(1 2) #(3 4)) mergeDelimited: Character tab = #(1 2 Character tab 3 4), #('ab' 'cd') mergeDelimited: Character cr = 'ab cd' " | returnCollection aSeperator | self ifEmpty: [^self]. aSeperator _ anObject isCollection ifTrue: [anObject] ifFalse: [Array with: anObject]. returnCollection _ self first species new. self copy from: 1 to: self size -1 do: [:a | a ifNotNil: [ returnCollection _ returnCollection, a, aSeperator ]. ]. ^returnCollection, self last. And for completeness: Collection >> merge "return to reciever a collection with each element concatenated to remove imbeded collections" "#(#(1 2) #(3 4)) merge = #(1 2 3 4), #('ab' 'cd') merge = 'abcd'" | returnCollection | self ifEmpty: [^self]. returnCollection _ self first species new. self do: [:a | a ifNotNil: [ returnCollection _ returnCollection, a ]. ]. ^returnCollection I've discussed adding my methods on mantis previously but I think the reaction I got was collection was already too large. The replacement for merge is gather: but merge has an additional feature in that it creates collections in the type of the first element, which means it works for strings. #('a' 'b' 'c') gather: [:a | a] #($a $b $c) #('a' 'b' 'c') merge 'abc' Otherwise it is similar. #(#(1 2) #(3 4)) gather: [:a | a] #(1 2 3 4) #(#(1 2) #(3 4)) merge #(1 2 3 4) So back to my original question is there an explode: aDelimiter method out there that I missed? There is a Collection>>asStringOn: aStream delimiter: delimString but this doesn't meet my requirement for a collection of non string elements (including other collections). Thanks, Ron Teitelbaum

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Fwd: [Vm-dev] VM stability issue on unix
by Adrian Lienhard 05 Sep '06

05 Sep '06

I've recently brought up the following issue on the VM mailing list, but got no reply so far for whatever reason... In short, the problem is that the unix VM blocks after the memory consumption exceeds about 120MB. I think its a critical bug, likely affecting many Seaside users who deploy on unix systems. I've filed the following Mantis report: http://bugs.impara.de/ view.php?id=4709 Adrian Begin forwarded message: > From: Adrian Lienhard <adi(a)netstyle.ch> > Date: August 31, 2006 8:23:20 AM GMT+02:00 > To: vm-dev(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org > Subject: [Vm-dev] VM stability issue on unix > Reply-To: Squeak Virtual Machine Development Discussion <vm- > dev(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org> > > Hi VM maintainers, > > We have run into the following problem with 3.7/3.9 unix VMs (but > not with version 3.6). The VM hoggs the CPU and does not respond > anymore after consuming more than about 120MB of memory. The > problem is reproducible independently of the image version (simply > by instantiating enough objects). > > This is the VM version we are using: > > 3.7-7 #1 Don Okt 20 11:25:27 CEST 2005 gcc-Version (Debian > Squeak3.7 of '4 September 2004' [latest update: #5989] Linux 2.6.10 > #1 Tue Dec 28 21:16:21 CET 2004 i686 GNU/Linux > > Inspecting the Squeak process stacks with gdb does not show > anything unusual, however, one process does not seem to get back > from calling t he new: primitive. > > The call stack of the VM looks like this: > > #0 updatePointersInRangeFromto (memStart=231866373, > memEnd=2138759076) > at gnu-interp.c:21562 > #1 0x0805d500 in incCompBody () at gnu-interp.c:4650 > #2 0x0805d2ed in fullGC () at gnu-interp.c:4500 > #3 0x0806d576 in sufficientSpaceAfterGC (minFree=202536) at gnu- > interp.c:21275 > #4 0x08067d5e in primitiveNewWithArg () at gnu-interp.c:16045 > #5 0x080614fa in interpret () at gnu-interp.c:7249 > #6 0x0805a5fb in main (argc=0, argv=0xbfeff8a4, envp=0x0) > at /usr/src/Squeak-3.7-7/platforms/unix/vm/sqUnixMain.c:1367 > > It looks like the same issue has been discussed in the following > thread already: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/seaside/ > 2005-October/005897.html. > The proposed workaround of explicitly setting -memory with a high > enough value works, i.e., the vm does not stop working when the > memory consumption exceeds 120MB. > > Since in Seaside applications images often grow up to 200MB or even > more, this is a real show stopper... > > Cheers, > Adrian

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