[ANN] 7061 = Squeak 3.9 final

So Squeak is not meant to build commercial products (Impara,
Smallthought, ... )?

To be honest I have a hard time renumbering the last time SqueakMap
worked and did not throw an obscure error at me.

That's why I prefer to have all my packages in Monticello, just hit
load and it works.

Philippe


2006/9/25, Hiren Thacker <[hidden email]>:

Seaside is changing that, Squeak is perfect for writing commercial web
applications.

Ramon Leon
http://onsmalltalk.com

> "But Squeak is only a toy." - "Yes, thanks to God!" - anonymous vs.  
> squeaker

> I m very happy coz i m still a kid.

Still I hope that the work of henrik rescued by Andy will help us  
improving the overall look of Squeak
(een the feel could be better). Let us adpot a little step at a time  
and make sure that we do a lot of them.
So sophie enhancements are important

Stef

Brad Fuller wrote: No comment on my question?

Hi brad

been an VM ignorant I cannot reply. Now I hope that this bug can be  
fixed for 3.9 VMs
It seems to me that from an image perspective we can safely release  
the image.
Now we should also move, so that people migrate their code on 3.9 and  
that we start
on 3.10 :)

Stef

On Sep 25, 2006, at 21:11 , Brad Fuller wrote:

> Brad Fuller wrote:
>> tim Rowledge wrote:
>>
>> Wouldn't the VM Crash, that I and others reported, be a reason not to
>> release until fixed? Mantis issue# 0005056
>>
>> brad
> No comment on my question?

I think, the current VM issues would be a good reason to pospone the  
release.

Unfortunately, as it seems to me, the VM is quite poorly maintained.  
Probably the main reason being that the maintainers don't have enough  
time (or, in other words, because they are not paid to fix the  
problems). Another difficulty is that there are only few people that  
actually work on the VM (why?).

Apart from the bug you mention (http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?
id=0005056) there are others. For example:
- http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?id=4709 (VM blocks after memory  
consumtion exceeds ~120MB)
- http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?id=4882 (VM lockup)

Cheers,
Adrian

PS: cc to vm-dev

>
> Still I hope that the work of henrik rescued by Andy will help us
> improving the overall look of Squeak

    This is really over over over my head ;-)

    But it is very interesting to know that the overall look of Squeak
    can be improved with modularization. ;-)


    Cheers,

    SmallSqueak

----- Original Message -----
From: "stephane ducasse" <[hidden email]>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 2:41 PM
Subject: Re: Squeak map colours

Hi!

"Philippe Marschall" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> So Squeak is not meant to build commercial products (Impara,
> Smallthought, ... )?
>
> To be honest I have a hard time renumbering the last time SqueakMap
> worked and did not throw an obscure error at me.

Eh, I am not sure how SqueakMap came into this thread but anyway:

What error do you get? Doesn't it work for you now?

I am aware of a few current bugs or "inconveniences" but generally I
think SM works ok in 3.8+.

regards, Göran

"SmallSqueak" <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Still I hope that the work of henrik rescued by Andy will help us
> > improving the overall look of Squeak
>
>     This is really over over over my head ;-)
>
>     But it is very interesting to know that the overall look of Squeak
>     can be improved with modularization. ;-)

He did not refer to the modules work by Henrik - he referred to the look
enhancements and primarily I guess the sub pixel font rendering etc.

regards, Göran

2006/9/25, Ramon Leon <[hidden email]>:
Not perfect. Not even close. Just look at the hacks introduced in
Seaside2.7a1-avi.10 because blocks in Squeak suck.

Do you know how many times I got bitten (doing commercial web
applications) because I forgot to add a #fixTemps? It can tell you one
thing, if Java 1.7 will get closures, it will not require #fixTemps.

Then there are all these VM horror stories. And don't get me started
on persistence, or XML, or SOAP, or concurrency, or ...  or IO in
general, urls, ... or browsers

Philippe

stephane ducasse wrote:

Hi brad

been an VM ignorant I cannot reply. Now I hope that this bug can be fixed for 3.9 VMs
It seems to me that from an image perspective we can safely release the image.
Now we should also move, so that people migrate their code on 3.9 and that we start
on 3.10 :)

Thanks for your comment, Stef. That seems reasonable. However, are you sure that it's a VM issue? The VM crashes, but can it not be an issue from higher up?

brad

Stef

- includes cs fix and required traits fixes

- is out and I would consider it as final.

Sounds promising. Might I suggest allowing a week for possible
problems before blessing it? There are few thigs quite as embarrassing
as declaring a final version and finding out you forgot something
crucial. DAMHIKT, as they say in the woodworking world.

Wouldn't the VM Crash, that I and others reported, be a reason not to
release until fixed? Mantis issue# 0005056

brad

No comment on my question?

> > Seaside is changing that, Squeak is perfect for writing
> commercial web
> > applications.
>
> Not perfect. Not even close. Just look at the hacks
> introduced in Seaside2.7a1-avi.10 because blocks in Squeak suck.

Yea, I know, I guess perfect was an overstatement.

> Do you know how many times I got bitten (doing commercial web
> applications) because I forgot to add a #fixTemps? It can
> tell you one thing, if Java 1.7 will get closures, it will
> not require #fixTemps.

Nor does Squeak, if you use the new closure compiler, however, Seaside
attempts to do all the #fixTemps for you, you shouldn't have to think about.
I do lot's of seaside code and never have to call #fixTemps myself.

> Then there are all these VM horror stories. And don't get me
> started on persistence, or XML, or SOAP, or concurrency, or
> ...  or IO in general, urls, ... or browsers
>
> Philippe

Xml's a bit odd, I admit, SOAP though, works great.  I use SOAP between
Squeak and .Net daily, it's rock solid so far.  I had to beg the author of
SoapCore to add .Net support initially, since .Net's a bit odd, but since
then it's been great.  Squeak isn't perfect, but it's better than anything
else I've seen.

Ramón León
http://onsmalltalk.com 

> > Do you know how many times I got bitten (doing commercial web
> > applications) because I forgot to add a #fixTemps? It can
> > tell you one thing, if Java 1.7 will get closures, it will
> > not require #fixTemps.
>
> Nor does Squeak, if you use the new closure compiler, however, Seaside
> attempts to do all the #fixTemps for you, you shouldn't have to think about.
> I do lot's of seaside code and never have to call #fixTemps myself.

Closure compiler makes all blocks slower (not what you want for
Seaside) and doesn't work with exceptions.

So the security hole that allowed arbitrary code execution is fixed?
How do you use SSL together with SOAP?

Philippe

Of course it can. But what can we do? do we have reproduceable bugs.  
I do not think so. So we can stop 3.9 and postpone it but
I'm pretty sure it will not help.

VW has good VM because some smart guys are payed full time for that.  
Now the community does not want to understand that
money (the stuff with believe has value) is a good way to make things  
happening. So improvements will be slow and we should leave with  
that. Now if every seasoned squeakers would put 100 $ on a pot we  
could make that change. I tried with the foundation but failed. So  
now I will watch (but sadly I know the answer).

Stef

Philippe,

I think that you work too much with marcus :)
Been right does not mean to be bitter or negativist :)
We can change that. Step by step.
We did a lot in 3.9 and if people help/want we can do a lot in 3.10 too.

send fixes and we will consider them

Stef

stephane ducasse wrote: The code is in the mantis defect that is 100% reproducible on my PC. I
think it's easy to duplicate or make other PCs crash.

> So we can stop 3.9 and postpone it but
> I'm pretty sure it will not help.
I think what you are saying is that 3.9 should be pushed forward because
there are few people to look at this problem. If this is the case, a
couple of comments to that:

* Tim's been assigned the defect.
* John said he'd look at the Mac version of it.
* what is the acceptance criteria for releasing a major version?

We don't know when Tim and John will be looking at the problem. But,
certainly a crash should be enough to stop and consider the release. No?

Thanks to Tim and John for looking into this!

>
> VW has good VM because some smart guys are payed full time for that.
> Now the community does not want to understand that
> money (the stuff with believe has value) is a good way to make things
> happening. So improvements will be slow and we should leave with that.
> Now if every seasoned squeakers would put 100 $ on a pot we could make
> that change. I tried with the foundation but failed. So now I will
> watch (but sadly I know the answer).
I'm a poor musician... but I could spare  a C note for the cause!. ;-)

> Closure compiler makes all blocks slower (not what you want for
> Seaside) and doesn't work with exceptions.

Ok, true.

>
> So the security hole that allowed arbitrary code execution is fixed?

Didn't know about that, got a link to more info?

> How do you use SSL together with SOAP?
>
> Philippe

I'd use stunnel, since squeak doesn't do SSL, and stunnel works quite well.

On 25-Sep-06, at 12:33 PM, Adrian Lienhard wrote:

$ (or lack there of)

> Apart from the bug you mention (http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?
> id=0005056) there are others.

a pointer to memory is an unsigned value, not a signed integer. Tim  
will gladly accept lots of $$ to fix that.


> For example:
> - http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?id=4709 (VM blocks after memory  
> consumtion exceeds ~120MB)

I added a note about http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3710, since  
likely the problem is hitting the wall when attempting to grow the  
image.

> - http://bugs.impara.de/view.php?id=4882 (VM lockup)

See added notes about setVMStatsTraceMessageSendLevels:
The Mac carbon VM and unix VMs all share the same code for aioPoll  
and socket logic.
Since all the source code *is* available others are welcome to look  
at the logic and try to figure out what is going on.

>
> Cheers,
> Adrian
>
> PS: cc to vm-dev
>
>

--
========================================================================
===
John M. McIntosh <[hidden email]>
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
========================================================================
===

On 25-Sep-06, at 1:42 PM, Brad Fuller wrote:

It doesn't affect my G5 mac so far. I have to say, 16 million float  
additions in 61 mS is damn fast.

It would be helpful if someone could build a PC vm with a small  
change in the code that prints the callstack after a problem like  
this so that it doesn't cast the context address to a signed value  
before printing it. I'm puzzled by the apparently large jump to
-2128068388 HandMorph>handleEvent:
-2128068768 MouseOverHandler>processMouseOver:
from
2032428416 HandMorph>handleEvent:
2032428116 HandMorph>processEvents

-2128068768 is 0x81283F60 and 2032428416 is 0x79246580; that's a bit  
more of a difference than the usual 92 byte increment as we build the  
stack sending messages. I don't see anything very odd about the code  
in HandMorph>handleEvent: that would lead me to expect any message  
sending funny business.

In the function printCallStackOf() that you should find in interp.c,  
try changing
/* end findSelectorOfMethod:forReceiver: */;
                printNum(ctxt);
                print(" ");
                if (!(ctxt == home)) {
to
/* end findSelectorOfMethod:forReceiver: */;
                printf("%X", ctxt);
                print(" ");
                if (!(ctxt == home)) {

and see if it can give us the stack in hex.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful Latin Phrases:- Utinam coniurati te in foro interficiant! =  
May conspirators assassinate you in the mall!

Il giorno lun, 25/09/2006 alle 13.42 -0700, Brad Fuller ha scritto:
I can reproduce it on my system, (Fedora Core 5, 3.9-7 vm, 3.8 image).

How common is this single bug? Can't we just add a remark in a "known
problems" section, and say it will be fixed as soon as possible?

        Giovanni