Squeak-dev April 2024

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22 participants
33 discussions

The User Interupt behaviour is very much improved, thank you.
by gettimothy 29 Apr '24

29 Apr '24

I, King of the endless loops and infinite recursions, am very, very appreciative of the responsiveness of the User Interupt. Thank you.

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The Inbox: Files-cmm.207.mcz
by commits＠source.squeak.org 29 Apr '24

29 Apr '24

Chris Muller uploaded a new version of Files to project The Inbox: http://source.squeak.org/inbox/Files-cmm.207.mcz ==================== Summary ==================== Name: Files-cmm.207 Author: cmm Time: 28 April 2024, 7:24:18.020282 pm UUID: 7f3afa72-a69e-48be-aae7-a50900bfd4a3 Ancestors: Files-ul.206 - Support #currentDirectoryNickname from FileDirectory class>>#on:. - Don't allow FileStream class>>#newFileNamed:do: and #forceNewFileNamed:do: to fail silently. =============== Diff against Files-ul.206 =============== Item was changed: ----- Method: FileDirectory class>>on: (in category 'instance creation') ----- on: pathString "Return a new file directory for the given path, of the appropriate FileDirectory subclass for the current OS platform." | pathName | DirectoryClass ifNil: [self setDefaultDirectoryClass]. "If path ends with a delimiter (: or /) then remove it" pathName := pathString. (pathName at: pathName size ifAbsent: nil) = self pathNameDelimiter ifTrue: [pathName := pathName allButLast]. DirectoryClass parentDirectoryNickname ifNotNil: [:parentName| (pathName beginsWith: parentName) ifTrue: [pathName = parentName ifTrue: [^self default containingDirectory]. (pathName at: parentName size + 1 ifAbsent: nil) = self pathNameDelimiter ifTrue: [^self default containingDirectory on: (pathName allButFirst: parentName size + 1)]]]. + DirectoryClass currentDirectoryNickname ifNotNil: + [: currentName| + (pathName beginsWith: currentName) ifTrue: + [pathName = currentName ifTrue: + [^self default]. + (pathName at: currentName size + 1 ifAbsent: nil) = self pathNameDelimiter ifTrue: + [^self default on: (pathName allButFirst: currentName size + 1)]]]. + ^DirectoryClass new setPathName: pathName! Item was changed: ----- Method: FileStream class>>forceNewFileNamed:do: (in category 'instance creation') ----- + forceNewFileNamed: fileName do: aBlock + "Create a file named fileName and value aBlock with a ReadWriteStream on its contents, which is closed automatically upon completion of aBlock. If the file identified by fileName already exists, it will be replaced. If the file can't be created for any reason, signal an error." + ^ (self forceNewFileNamed: fileName) + ifNil: [ self error: 'file not created' ] + ifNotNil: [ : fileStream | self detectFile: fileStream do: aBlock ]! - forceNewFileNamed: fileName do: aBlock - "Avi Bryant says, ''This idiom is quite common in other languages that make heavy use of closures (i.e. Lisp (with-file 'foo' (f) ...) and Ruby (File.open('foo'){|f|...})). It's time Squeak had it, too.'' - - Returns the result of aBlock." - - ^self detectFile: (self forceNewFileNamed: fileName) do: aBlock! Item was changed: ----- Method: FileStream class>>newFileNamed:do: (in category 'instance creation') ----- + newFileNamed: fileName do: aBlock + "Create a file named fileName and value aBlock with a ReadWriteStream on its contents, which is closed automatically upon completion of aBlock. If the file identified by fileName already exists, signal an error. If the file can't be created for any reason, signal an error." + ^ (self newFileNamed: fileName) + ifNil: [ self error: 'file not created' ] + ifNotNil: [ : fileStream | self detectFile: fileStream do: aBlock ]! - newFileNamed: fileName do: aBlock - "Avi Bryant says, ''This idiom is quite common in other languages that make heavy use of closures (i.e. Lisp (with-file 'foo' (f) ...) and Ruby (File.open('foo'){|f|...})). It's time Squeak had it, too.'' - - Returns the result of aBlock." - - ^self detectFile: (self newFileNamed: fileName) do: aBlock!

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Review Request: pragmaParsers-subclasses.1.cs
by christoph.thiede＠student.hpi.uni-potsdam.de 28 Apr '24

28 Apr '24

=============== Summary =============== Change Set: pragmaParsers-subclasses Date: 28 April 2024 Author: Christoph Thiede Do not ignore <pragmaParser> methods in subclasses of Parser or SHParserST80. =============== Diff =============== Behavior>>lookupSelector:upTo: {accessing method dictionary} · ct 4/28/2024 19:59 + lookupSelector: selector upTo: aSuperclass + "Look up the given selector in my methodDictionary. + Return the corresponding method if found. + Otherwise chase my superclass chain and try again. + Do not search beyond aSuperclass. + Return nil if no method is found." + | lookupClass | + lookupClass := self. + [lookupClass == nil] + whileFalse: + [(lookupClass includesSelector: selector) + ifTrue: [^ lookupClass compiledMethodAt: selector]. + lookupClass == aSuperclass ifTrue: [^ nil]. + lookupClass := lookupClass superclass]. + ^ nil Parser>>pragmaStatement {pragmas} · ct 4/28/2024 21:55 (changed) pragmaStatement "Parse a pragma statement. The leading '<' has already been consumed. The 'here' token is the first one in the pragma. Use that token to dispatch to a custom pragma-parsing method if one can be found with a selector that matches it. Note that custom pragma parsers need to fulfill two requirements: - method selector must match the current token as simple getter, e.g., <apicall: ...> matches #apicall or <primitive: ...> matches #primitive - method must have pragma <pragmaParser> to be called." "0) Early exit" (hereType = #keyword or: [ hereType = #word or: [ hereType = #binary ] ]) ifFalse: [ ^ self expected: 'pragma declaration' ]. "1) Do not consider one-word pragmas such as <primitive> and <foobar>. Only keyword pragmas." "2) Avoid interning new symbols for made-up pragmas such as #my for <my: 1 pragma: 2>." (Symbol lookup: (here last == $: ifTrue: [here allButLast] ifFalse: [here])) ifNotNil: [:parserSelector | - Parser methodDict at: parserSelector ifPresent: [:parserMethod | + (self class lookupSelector: parserSelector upTo: Parser) ifNotNil: [:parserMethod | "3) Only call methods that claim to be a custom pragma parser via <pragmaParser>." (parserMethod hasPragma: #pragmaParser) ifTrue: [^ self executeMethod: parserMethod]]]. "X) No custom pragma parser found. Use the default one." ^ self pragmaStatementKeywords SHParserST80>>parsePragmaStatement {parse pragma} · ct 4/28/2024 20:39 (changed) parsePragmaStatement "Parse a pragma statement. The leading '<' has already been consumed. The currentToken is the first one in the pragma. Use that token to dispatch to a custom pragma-parsing method if one can be found with a selector that matches it. Note that custom pragma parsers need to fulfill two requirements: - method selector must match the current token as simple getter, e.g., <apicall: ...> matches #apicall or <primitive: ...> matches #primitive - method must have pragma <pragmaParser> to be called." "1) Do not consider one-word pragmas such as <primitive> and <foobar>. Only keyword pragmas." currentToken last == $: ifTrue: [ "2) Avoid interning new symbols for made-up pragmas such as #my for <my: 1 pragma: 2>." (Symbol lookup: currentToken allButLast) ifNotNil: [:parserSelector | - SHParserST80 methodDict at: parserSelector ifPresent: [:parserMethod | + (self class lookupSelector: parserSelector upTo: SHParserST80) ifNotNil: [:parserMethod | "3) Only call methods that claim to be a custom pragma parser via <pragmaParser>." (parserMethod hasPragma: #pragmaParser) ifTrue: [^ self executeMethod: parserMethod]]]]. "X) No custom pragma parser found. Use the default one." ^ self parsePragmaDefault --- Sent from Squeak Inbox Talk ["pragmaParsers-subclasses.1.cs"]

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The Weekly Squeak News
by Scott Gibson 28 Apr '24

28 Apr '24

Hello! My name is Scott Gibson and I will be helping with The Weekly Squeak. I started with Squeak (and Smalltalk) in 2008 and thoroughly enjoy the language and environment. I really appreciate all of the hard work that everyone has contributed in maintaining and advancing Squeak. Helping with Squeak news is one way that I will be able to contribute. If you have anything that you would like to share or articles or anything that might be worth having mentioned please let me know and I will get it posted. Thanks! Scott

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Squeak Robot
by Jon Hylands 27 Apr '24

27 Apr '24

So, here's a short little video, showing my quad walker robot on a stand (which is running Squeak on a Raspberry pi zero 2 w), being controlled by a sort-of smart watch I designed and built. I call that device a URC, which stands for Universal Robot Configurer, and it allows you to control and configure a robot using a peer-to-peer networking technology called ESPNow. The code on the URC is written in MicroPython (running on an ESP32), but as I said before, the robot is running Squeak. - Jon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhJfxAyPefs

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the TextEditorCommandHistory keeps closed windows alive
by Eliot Miranda 26 Apr '24

26 Apr '24

Hi All, I'm simulating a VMMaker image generated by closing several windows, leaving only a single workspace open: Monticello Browser Transcript In-image Compilation Workspace Message Names Form CameraInterface class Form In-image Compilation Workspace IGC Workspace Webcam Workspace 3DICL Source Generation Workspace Recording Workspace Spur and 3D Synchronization Workspace (play A) ToDo Workspace Socket Workspace WebCam Resolution Workspace Slang Test Workspace Message Names VM Simulation Workspace Version: 3DICC-Plugins-eem.115 Senders of buildCenterRows Slang Test Workspace Workspace Alas all the closed windows are still present, and still consuming lots of time getting processed at start-up time. The thing keeping all these instances alive is the TextEditorCommandHistory. Here is the pointer chase for one of the windows, obtained via PluggableSystemWindow someInstance chasePointers If one uses "chase pointers" in an inspector on all instances of PluggableSystemWindow then the deferred action queue may show up as the thing keeping the window alive. It isn't. Smalltalk an IdentityDictionary(size 4991) a HandMorph(878960) a TextMorphForEditView(2311672) a SmalltalkEditor a TextEditorCommandHistory {a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand . a TextEditorCommand} a TextEditorCommand a Text for '' a PluggableSystemWindow<Monticello Browser>(2275431) '' a RunArray runs: #(1 52 1) values: {{a TextColor code: (Color r: 0.0 g: 0.0 b: 0.5)} . {a TextInspectIt} . {a TextColor code: (Color r: 0.0 g: 0.0 b: 0.5)}} {{a TextColor code: (Color r: 0.0 g: 0.0 b: 0.5)} . {a TextInspectIt} . {a TextColor code: (Color r: 0.0 g: 0.0 b: 0.5)}} {a TextInspectIt} a TextInspectIt a PluggableSystemWindow<Monticello Browser>(2275431) _,,,^..^,,,_ best, Eliot

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the deferred action queue prevents GC of closed windows
by Eliot Miranda 26 Apr '24

26 Apr '24

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SqueakSource, Seaside, and web bot meltdowns
by lewis＠mail.msen.com 26 Apr '24

26 Apr '24

Below is a copy of a recent discussion on the box-admins Slack channel. I am copying it here to the mailing list so the discussion will not be lost. Some of this is administrivia but it includes Levente's explanation of why this is a problem on our SeasSide/SqueakSource services, and what can be done to improve the situation. In addition to blocking the bot traffic, it also may be possible (details below) to make Seaside much less vulnerable to this activity. Dave === thread from slack chat below === lewis 4 days ago I see some evidence that squeaksource.com running on dan.box.squeak.org is being hit by a bot of some sort. I can see activity in the Squeak process browser (VNC connection), and I also see activity in /proc/<squeakpid>/fd/ that looks like it may be someone scanning projects through the squeaksource.com service. This may be the source of the high system load and sluggish response that we have been seeing, and it does some to be getting worse over time. Is there any kind of log or utility that I can use to get an idea of where these connections are coming from? These would be connections routed through alan to connect to dan. Thanks for any tips or suggestions. 22 replies leves 3 days ago I think I have mentioned it a couple times that ~99% of all traffic is bot traffic. The way seaside handles urls is very different than how the rest of the web does, and that confuses bots. They think that the urls they get with the session id and page key can be visited later, but when they do, they'll just create a new session with many new links to visit. Seaside's session management is quadratic: creating/accessing/deleting a session requires as many operations as sessions exist. A long time ago, I created an alternative session registry for Seaside 2.8, that requires amortized constant time to create/access/delete a session. http://leves.web.elte.hu/linkeddictionary/ . But the seaside team decided to go down a different path about session management. It became pluggable, so my version couldn't be used since Seaside 2.9. Anyway, we can filter out some of the bot traffic to reduce the load if there's need. leves 3 days ago And to answer your question, yes, there are logs on alan. /var/log/nginx/squeaksourcecom-access.log has the current day's log (according to UTC) and /var/log/nginx/squeaksourcecom-access.log.1 has the previous day's log. The latter file currently has 2.6 million entries, so there were that many requests. leves 3 days ago Just noticed that you don't have a user on alan yet. I can either create a user for you, or I can copy some of the files over to dan. lewis 3 days ago Thanks Levente. I would appreciate if you can give me an account on alan. I will use it with care, and it will help me to figure out problems like this. Thank you, and thank you for the explanation of the Seaside issues. lewis 3 days ago And yes, if there is a way to filter out some of the bot traffic, I think we are at a point where it is becoming necessary. I am mainly watching dan.box.squeak.org but I expect that the same issues apply to our source.squeak.org server on andreas.box.squeak.org. lewis 3 days ago @leves the Seaside that we are using in our SqueakSource servers appears to be about 15 to 20 years old, with some local patches to keep it working in later Squeak images. I am not sure of the history behind this, but I don't think that our squeaksource servers really care what version of Seaside they are running on, just as long as it works. If you can point to any other version of Seaside that contains your alternative session registry for Seaside 2.8, then maybe we should try it? I am happy to work on it. Also sent to the channel tim 3 days ago I can aver that current-ish Seaside (3.4.etc) works decently on Squeak 6+. There's a few tweaks I have that are submitted (kinda) but not yet adopted. lewis 3 days ago I guess my question is this - since we obviously do not care about being current with Seaside (we are running a 20 year old version now), is there some runnable version of it that does contain Levente's enhancement that we could use instead? I do not care about being "up to date" I just want it to work. (edited) tim 1 day ago That's an interesting question. tim 1 day ago On one side, taking the current image and loading vente's session changes is 'simple' for certain definitions of the word. It changes as little as possible BUT leaves us running very old code. tim 1 day ago On the other side, adopting a current image and Seaside version involves more changes but brings in a couple of decades of improvements. lewis 1 day ago I'm not too interested in a couple of decades of improvements unless the improvements actually improve something. But if @leves has an alternative session registry that addresses the issues we are seeing on the squeaksource boxes, then I would be very happy to try running it regardless of what version of Seaside it uses. lewis 1 day ago I guess I should also say that I really don't know what version of Seaside we are running now for our SqueakSource services. The MCZ packages seem to be of ancient vintage so I am assuming that they might be something reasonably compatible with an alternative session registry. leves 23 hours ago IIRC you can just load the Seaside-Registry-ul.3.mcz package into Seaside 2.8 and it should work, though it was 15 years ago, so I may be wrong. :slightly_smiling_face: Anyway, I've blocked a bunch of bots from the Singaporean Alibaba cloud. Those were responsible for about 3/4 of all traffic. Since they used fake user agent string, I don't know what service they were representing. leves 23 hours ago Another bot that gets down the infinite session rabbit hole is ClaudeBot. I tried to block it via robots.txt, but it's not easy to set up robots.txt with the current nginx setup (there's already a rule for robots.txt that cannot be overriden in nginx...). lewis 23 hours ago @leves Thank you! The high system load problem on squeaksource.com and source.squeak.org seems to be resolved. I have not been able to watch closely but I think that both services have been back to normal for the last couple of days. leves 23 hours ago There was some outage ~11 hours ago. During that I decided to filter out those bots. I haven't checked the configuration of source.squeak.org, so the bots can still reach that. lewis 23 hours ago I expect that squeaksource.com is the most vulnerable due to the large number of projects to scan. But source.squeak.org would be vulnerable to the same issues so it would be good to block the bots there also. I suspect that some of the problems that @cmm has been working on (mutex and process scheduling questions) may in fact be caused by the scanning bots. leves 23 hours ago I think the bot traffic just triggers the issues. But I agree that we would be better off without the bots. Here are the user agents that sent more than 1000 requests to source.squeak.org yesterday: 1146 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AwarioBot/1.0; +https://awario.com/bots.html) 2225 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots) 2421 CCBot/2.0 (https://commoncrawl.org/faq/) 4260 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/) 4282 Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0;) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; PetalBot;+https://webmaster.petalsearch.com/site/petalbot) 10562 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; BLEXBot/1.0; +http://webmeup-crawler.com/) 11025 Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/116.0.1938.76 Safari/537.36 13001 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_5) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.1.1 Safari/605.1.15 (Applebot/0.1; +http://www.apple.com/go/applebot) 20779 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; SemrushBot/7~bl; +http://www.semrush.com/bot.html) 30990 Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DotBot/1.2; +https://opensiteexplorer.org/dotbot; help(a)moz.com) 95781 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/600.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.2 Safari/600.2.5 (Amazonbot/0.1; +https://developer.amazon.com/support/amazonbot) 248770 Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/116.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 406213 Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot(a)anthropic.com) leves 22 hours ago There are about 10000 requests that are not listed above from yesterday. About 10% of those is non-bot traffic. So, ~1000 requests out of ~1 million is non-bot traffic. leves 22 hours ago The 248770 requests with the fake chrome on a mac are the bots from Singapore. lewis 22 hours ago Wow, I was not aware of this at all. Thank you. And I agree with you that 1) bot traffic just triggers the issues and 2) we would be better off without the bots. I am amazed to see the amount of bot traffic.

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3D graphics are hard
by Lauren Pullen 26 Apr '24

26 Apr '24

Dear List, Sometimes, your rendering code works, like in LampDemo. And sometimes it produces a secant picket fence instead of a fisheye effect. Which looks kinda cool anyways. Just thought I'd share.

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Archive of Byte magazine pdfs
by Tim Rowledge 25 Apr '24

25 Apr '24

Whilst searching for history info for a project I stumbled over a pretty comprehensive archive of Byte magazine issues, running from the very first (september 1975, so 49 years ago!) up to mid 1994 (30 years ago!). This is the biggest collection I've seen for Byte issues where things seem complete. Archive.org has a lot but it seems very disorganised. There is, of course, the epic August 1981 issue - https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Byte/80s/Byte-1981-08.pdf And the ten years later review issue - https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Byte/90s/1991/Byte-1991-08.pdf And somewhere in there, in an issue I can't remember, there is a review by Dick Pountain (who was a very widely known UK industry journo for many years) of the Acorn RISC OS productised version of Eliot's BrouHaHa vm. And probably some mentions from the same writer of the Active Book. tim -- tim Rowledge; tim(a)rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Strange OpCodes: TDB: Transfer and Drop Bits

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