Pharo scripting -- reborn as "Coral"

Hi Folks,

I spent some time yesterday together with Stef to take a closer look  
at the Pharo scripting project.

We have repackaged and renamed the project as "Coral". It is available  
on SqueakSource at:

http://www.squeaksource.com/Coral

You can now load it simply into a fresh Pharo-dev image by evaluating:

ScriptLoader new installer ss project: 'Coral'; install: 'LoadCoral'.

This will load everything that is required and pop up a few Workspace  
windows with further instructions.  (You will need John McIntosh's  
latest VM to get this to work -- all is described in the image.)

There is also a window with TO-DO items.  I am interested in starting  
a student project to really make this fly, so I would be grateful for  
your suggestions and desiderata.  If you are a potential user, please  
try it out and let me know what you would expect from a real Smalltalk  
scripting environment.

Thanks again to Mathieu and Gwenaël for getting this to work!

Oscar
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I just tried it. It works.

This is excellent!

By reading /dev/stdin, we should be able to have a prompt.

Cheers,
Alexandre

On 25 Feb 2009, at 13:55, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:

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On 25-Feb-09, at 4:55 AM, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:

> This will load everything that is required and pop up a few Workspace
> windows with further instructions.  (You will need John McIntosh's
> latest VM to get this to work -- all is described in the image.)

Well I'm curious why won't older VM's work?

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Oscar Nierstrasz wrote: I really didnt understand what Coral Saphire was all about, in
InstallerLauncher you could ask squeak to execute a script and output to
stdout. When I looked at Saphir I could see all sorst of parsers etc.
Whats it all for?

Keith

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On 25.02.2009, at 19:59, Keith Hodges wrote:


Having a grammar? Smalltalk has no language element to define classes  
and methods.
There is only "fileout" syntax. (expressions seperated by ! that get  
evaluated when
loaded).

Nobody wants to write scripts that way. And the proof is that nobody  
does it.

        Marcus

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Coral combining with Rio looks promising. A prompt will be great  
although.

> There is only "fileout" syntax. (expressions seperated by ! that get
> evaluated when
> loaded).
>
> Nobody wants to write scripts that way. And the proof is that nobody
> does it.

GNUSmalltalk also adopted a proper syntax.

Cheers,
Alexandre
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> please
> try it out and let me know what you would expect from a real Smalltalk
> scripting environment.


Something that would really push me in using Coral is an intelligent  
prompt. A list of the things the prompt should do:
        - crawling into the history of typed commands using up and down key  
arrow
        - tab completion (classes and method name)
        - colored output
        - Ctl-D to quit
        - Keybinds:
                * Ctlr-A beginning of the line
                * Ctrl-E end of the line
                * Alt- -> / Alt- <- to jump words

Cheers,
Alexandre
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On 25.02.2009, at 21:26, Alexandre Bergel wrote:

Microsoft's OO shell (I forgot the name. And it changed multiple times)
is quite cool. It shows how typical Shell things fit into OO nicely.
e.g.

        dir | sort

would communicate via a pipe, but and OO one, that is, objects  
describing files, not text
would be exchanged.

And, they had a cool framework for making these commands. Your script  
inherits from
the general superclass all the cool stuff, e.g. command line parsing  
and things like that.

Smalltalk would be very powerfull as an OO shell...

        Marcus



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> Microsoft's OO shell (I forgot the name. And it changed multiple  
> times)
> is quite cool. It shows how typical Shell things fit into OO nicely.
> e.g.
>
> dir | sort


You raise an interesting point. If we have a Smalltalk shell, does it  
make sense to have unix-like pipe (|) ? Maybe for efficiency.

Alexandre
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Others have mentioned looking at GNU Smalltalk (at least for a sane
interchange syntax).

I would also look at F-Script, particularly for Array Programming.

See also:
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3272861927

http://www.smalltalk.org/articles/article_20040920_a1.html

http://www.fscript.org/download/OOPAL.pdf

http://www.fscript.org/download/FScriptGuide.pdf

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Alexandre Bergel <[hidden email]> wrote:
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I modified REPLServer to do all of the above except for CTRL-d, colour and Alt-word skipping. I originally made it so that I could do stuff that breaks Morphic then still be able to use and recover the image.

REPLServer uses telnet but can be modified to use other input/output mechanisms such as stdin/stdout or Display/EventSensor.

REPLServer is loadable in Squeak 3.9, 3.10 using the Packages Universe, or http://www.squeaksource.com/SecureSqueak (I should really put it in its own project at some stage). Its documentation is available as "online help" from the CLI.

Gulik.

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My dream is to completely get rid of bash and other awful shells.

I remember to have seen a talk on a OO shell, where each command like  
'cat', 'ls', 'cd' where actually message sent to an instance of a  
class Shell. The receiver would then be implicit.
Imagine a prompt like:
        shell.

Each command will then be a message sent to the object referenced by  
the variable 'shell'.

entering 'ls' will then invoke 'shell.ls'...

Cheers,
Alexandre


On 25 Feb 2009, at 13:55, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:

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On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 10:14:30PM +0100, Alexandre Bergel wrote:
At least in theory, quoth already does this

http://netjam.org/quoth/

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On 25.02.2009, at 22:27, Matthew Fulmer wrote:

>>
>> Each command will then be a message sent to the object referenced by
>> the variable 'shell'.
>>
>> entering 'ls' will then invoke 'shell.ls'...


I would say that a command like "ls" is not a method. It's an object
(instance of a sublass of "Script" or "Command").

You want, for example, inherit things like command line parsing,  
standard options
(e.g. --help) and things liket that. A command like ls is far too  
complex to be
just one method.

        Marcus

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Michael van der Gulik <mikevdg@...> writes:

>
>
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Alexandre Bergel
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Please, please, keep UI feel homogeneous !
Why not HOME, END, CTRL + -> like any other text editor in the world ?
Even squeak is following that convention in TextMorphs !
Also let SHIFT+CONTROL+-> select over words and typed characters overwrite
selection.
You don't have to imitate a poor man's shell!

Let history cycle when at beginning/end of list (with some form of advertising).
And let restrict history crawling among lines matching the first letters if you
typed some (like Matlab does).

Nicolas


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Marcus Denker <denker@...> writes:

I would say ls is a message, and Shell ls answer with a LSCommand which is
kindOf: Command.
A Command use lazy evaluation: it does not evaluate until a end of line or pipe
message triggers evaluation (i mean send the message #value).

Before being evaluated, Command behaviour can be modified by sending all sort of
message, like -l --help etc...
Of course, apart options which are messages sent to the command (eventually with
arguments), a list of arguments can be passed to the Command itself (Command
valueWithArguments: aList).

Just have to invent the syntax now...

Nicolas


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> I would say that a command like "ls" is not a method. It's an object
> (instance of a sublass of "Script" or "Command").
>
> You want, for example, inherit things like command line parsing,
> standard options
> (e.g. --help) and things liket that. A command like ls is far too
> complex to be
> just one method.


could also be a trait. But I understand what you're saying. Entering  
'ls' will actually be translated into a 'ls executeInContext:  
currentContext' or something.
currentContext will then be aware of the current path.

Looks like to be an exciting project!

Alexandre
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> Please, please, keep UI feel homogeneous !
> Why not HOME, END, CTRL + -> like any other text editor in the world ?
> Even squeak is following that convention in TextMorphs !
> Also let SHIFT+CONTROL+-> select over words and typed characters  
> overwrite
> selection.
> You don't have to imitate a poor man's shell!

You could have several ways to get at the first character. Actually,  
not only "could", but "should".
Why not "home", "end" ? because there is no such keys on a mac.

> Let history cycle when at beginning/end of list (with some form of  
> advertising).
> And let restrict history crawling among lines matching the first  
> letters if you
> typed some (like Matlab does).


As most shell do as well.
Would be great to have, indeed.

Cheers,
Alexandre
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On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 09:48:08PM +0000, Nicolas Cellier wrote:
You may be interested in ExternalCommandShell which is part of the CommandShell
package (SqueakMap, SqueakSource, etc). This lets you use Squeak as a command
line shell replacing /bin/sh, and uses pipes to connect Smalltalk expressions,
command objects, and external OS programs.

        http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6023
        http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2153
        http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1914

The syntax is a mashup of Smalltalk and unix shell conventions. The pipes are
OS pipes where necessary to interact with external programs, or an object
that minics OS pipe behavior if the "commands" being connected are Smalltalk
expressions or command objects.

For example, if you enter "help | cat" at the command prompt, you will get
a Smalltalk command object that evaluates "help" and writes its output to
a Unix pipe connected to an OS process running the /bin/cat command, which
reads the output of the "help" command, and copies it to the shell output:

sqsh> help | cat
cd [path] - change default directory
help - help on sqsh commands
history - display command history list
pwd - print current working directory
sls [filepatterns] - list current directory contents
snapshot - save the Squeak image
exit - exit shell and quit Squeak without saving image
type [names...] - indicate how each name would be interpreted if used as a command
simple Smalltalk expression! evaluates a simple expression as a doIt
<ctl-C> to interrupt a running program
<ctl-D> to end input to a running program
sqsh>

Dave


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Hi John,

Apparently it has to do with support for relative paths.

Cheers,
- on

On Feb 26, 2009, at 11:50, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:

> because he changed the way the path of the vm is computed
> you can type
>
> squeak -image -file (relative path)
>
> before you had to
> squeak -image -file full path
>


On Feb 25, 2009, at 17:19, John M McIntosh wrote:


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