History Questions from Dan Ingalls

--

>
> I’m writing an article about Smalltalk over the years, and I have a couple of questions that you-all might be able to answer…
>
> Are there examples, old or current, of bundling the VM with the image to make a complete “Squeak app”?  I think I actually worked on one of these but I can’t remember?

In the wider Smalltalk context I have two examples from long ago;
a) the RISC OS version of Eliot's old Brouhaha vm (circa 1978) was bundled using the RISC OS approach of 'magic directories'. Rather like a simpler, more elegant and much easier to use version of the bundles Apple now use.
b) the ancient ObjectWorks from ParcPlace version for Windows could bind the image file into the Windows executable as a resource using the same tools as used to bundle the assorted icons and config files. I'd say it would be a near certainty that Jan Bottorff came up with that.

For Squeak in particular; the same RISC OS stuff was usable, of course, and I claim that putting the VM and image into hardware (the Interval MediaPad etc) ought to count if only to provide an excuse to write about it. Oh - and obviously the Active Book of sainted memory should count too.

And of course, the current Mac bundles and the All-in-one packages should be there.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Oxymorons: Microsoft Works

Digitalk VSE stored the image in a program file section. This made app deployment a process of save the image and ship the exe. It was the standard method for distributing applications. The development tools were in a shared object library that did not ship with the application.

John Sarkela

I shouldn’t have hit send quite so quickly.

In the later days of VSE, the preferred app deployment mechanism was to put all of the application code into SLL object libraries. The stock executable looked for a file of library names to link at start up.

Deployment entailed a stock executable, a collection of SLL object libraries (image segments), and a script with a list of libraries to load.

John Sarkela

On Sun, Jan 05, 2020 at 06:45:25PM -0800, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> (please keep Dan in cc when replying)
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>
> Hi Folks -
>

<snip>


>
> Ted told me that someone on the Squeak list wrote about ST-80 (Squeak?) being its
> own support center at 2 am.  Praise for having everything accessible!  He
> searched his notes for this great email. but did not find it.  Anyone
> remember this email and can send it along?


I cannot find the specific email, although it sounds familiar and I
am fairly sure that somebody must have said that at least once :-)

Possibly these two links will jog some memories:

 http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1997-December/004323.html

 http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1997-December/025002.html

Maybe it was a message on comp.lang.smalltalk?

Dave


>
> Thanks and happy New Year
>
>   - Dan
> --

>

On 7/01/20 12:33 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
We used the same technique for shipping Sophie and I think by now the all in one launchers for Squeak and Pharo are
(somewhat) based on the same idea.

> Somewhere I have a photo of the shrink-wrapped box on the shelf of a local electronics store...
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20060519085028/http://www.impara.de/projekt_painter.htm

I have a box somewhere, need to dig it out and take a photo :-)
Imagine, shipping software without the possibility of issuing an update if you screwed up!

There was also the Squeakland plugin that allowed to run Squeak/Etoys in a browser, a rather "interesting" combination
of browser plugin dll, VM exe and image. Andreas Raab managed to somehow perform that magic.

The original motivation and implementation of it was actually to ship a Squeak based game (Oceanic Panic) for Disney
Online. I might still have some screenshots somewhere, but probably not a good idea posting it knowing Disney lawyers...
John Maloney did the original work before I joined Disney Online. Never got shipped on the internets, but there was an
installation at Epcot (Disneyworld) for a number of years. We managed to squeeze everything into under 2MB for dial-up.
That was in 1999, before wifi, ADSL was something exotic only geeks had... Sorry, getting nostalgic  ;-)

Michael

On 7/01/20 2:49 AM, JOHN SARKELA via Squeak-dev wrote:
> I shouldn’t have hit send quite so quickly.
>
> In the later days of VSE, the preferred app deployment mechanism was to put all of the application code into SLL object libraries. The stock executable looked for a file of library names to link at start up.
>
> Deployment entailed a stock executable, a collection of SLL object libraries (image segments), and a script with a list of libraries to load.

LabWare (http://labware.com) makes use of SLLs to ship updates and customized versions of their LIMS system. (hope I'm
not giving away any secrets here).

Actually makes for interesting discussions between the "save-image" and "SLL" factions. Somehow both sides never
consider that it is not an either or choice ;-)

Michael