Running VA on Linux, current UI status and roadmap [WAS] Re: One-page VA Smalltalk manual?

In the past, we started wrapping GTK but our customers survey showed that it had lower priority than other projects. So it was left behind. For 9.3 we will be revising this once again and see if its worth continuing with that GTK effort. 

In the meanwhile, I have heard of some people having a good experience running with Wine. I tried it myself and did some testing but I cannot say more because I did not test it extensively... just tried a couple of things. To run you should do something like this:

wine bin64/abt.exe -iimage64/abt.icx -ini:image64/abt.ini & 

Then it will look like the attached screenshot (Linux Mint running VA 64 bits Windows exe)

Best, 

--

Mariano Martinez Peck
Software Engineer, Instantiations Inc.

Email: <a href="javascript:" target="_blank" gdf-obfuscated-mailto="Na3LVCcqAwAJ" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href=&#39;javascript:&#39;;return true;" onclick="this.href=&#39;javascript:&#39;;return true;">mp...@instantiations.com

Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/MartinezPeck" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href=&#39;https://www.google.com/url?q\x3dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FMartinezPeck\x26sa\x3dD\x26sntz\x3d1\x26usg\x3dAFQjCNFPV-7Bnc-U6phGEh-VZU0iUtY7vw&#39;;return true;" onclick="this.href=&#39;https://www.google.com/url?q\x3dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FMartinezPeck\x26sa\x3dD\x26sntz\x3d1\x26usg\x3dAFQjCNFPV-7Bnc-U6phGEh-VZU0iUtY7vw&#39;;return true;">https://twitter.com/MartinezPeck

LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariano-mart%C3%ADnez-peck/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href=&#39;https://www.google.com/url?q\x3dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmariano-mart%25C3%25ADnez-peck%2F\x26sa\x3dD\x26sntz\x3d1\x26usg\x3dAFQjCNGyJTUAWXPstaw4J3OpFUYRyFAqmw&#39;;return true;" onclick="this.href=&#39;https://www.google.com/url?q\x3dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmariano-mart%25C3%25ADnez-peck%2F\x26sa\x3dD\x26sntz\x3d1\x26usg\x3dAFQjCNGyJTUAWXPstaw4J3OpFUYRyFAqmw&#39;;return true;">www.linkedin.com/in/mariano-martinez-peck

Blog: <a href="https://marianopeck.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href=&#39;https://www.google.com/url?q\x3dhttps%3A%2F%2Fmarianopeck.wordpress.com%2F\x26sa\x3dD\x26sntz\x3d1\x26usg\x3dAFQjCNHAOaIsyMIYgmQWdQZRuKRdD6gBfw&#39;;return true;" onclick="this.href=&#39;https://www.google.com/url?q\x3dhttps%3A%2F%2Fmarianopeck.wordpress.com%2F\x26sa\x3dD\x26sntz\x3d1\x26usg\x3dAFQjCNHAOaIsyMIYgmQWdQZRuKRdD6gBfw&#39;;return true;">https://marianopeck.wordpress.com/

On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 11:43 AM Joachim Tuchel <<a href="javascript:" target="_blank" gdf-obfuscated-mailto="Q8MKZzSxBAAJ" rel="nofollow" onmousedown="this.href=&#39;javascript:&#39;;return true;" onclick="this.href=&#39;javascript:&#39;;return true;">jtu...@...> wrote:

Mariano,

Am Donnerstag, 23. Mai 2019 14:36:22 UTC+2 schrieb Mariano Martinez Peck:

 

In the past, we started wrapping GTK but our customers survey showed that it had lower priority than other projects. So it was left behind. For 9.3 we will be revising this once again and see if its worth continuing with that GTK effort. 

This is good news. I hope your IoT / Raspian experiments add enough "pain" to your daily work that you and your colleages clearly see the benefits of such a project ;-)

hehehehe "thanks"

Anyway, let me clarify something: there is no doubts about the benefits of such a project. Many of us at Instantiations do love Linux and OSX.. and use it as host OS and use Windows via VMWare just for running VAST. So, for our daily work, we would love to have a GTK binding. But Instantiations shouldn't spend its money based on the benefits I can see... it should do it based on what customers would appreciate. That's why there have been surveys in the past with customers to see what they would value the most. And GTK binding seem it was never ranked too high. So, as simple as that.

 

We may do a new survey at some point.  

 

In the meanwhile, I have heard of some people having a good experience running with Wine. I tried it myself and did some testing but I cannot say more because I did not test it extensively... just tried a couple of things. To run you should do something like this:

wine bin64/abt.exe -iimage64/abt.icx -ini:image64/abt.ini & 

I also heard that and tried and had some trouble with a few primitives on 64 bits. All looked great for the first hour or so but then I had some failed primitives for UUID creation (openSSL?)...

So I can confirm VAST 9.1x64 runs on Wine in KUbuntu 18.04, it seems you need to be prepared to do some DLL tweaking or additional installations or such stuff. If that doesn't scare you, it's most likely the nicest VAST exprience you can get under Linux at this time. Scintilla and syntax coloring are adding so much value to your developer's routine. You don't realize how nice all these things have become in the later versions of VAST until you either have to work on an older one (like 8.1) or on Linux....

Indeed. So far, the only thing I had to do to a vanilla installation is to change the path to the manager...

 

So I keep my fingers crossed the evaluation will be a success ;-)

One important thing that cannot be over-estimated: if you have to use external stuff on Linux, developing on Windows and deploying to Linux doesn't really work well. Things like starting external processes, calling out to libraries (especially ones that are not available for Windows) needs a Linux box for development and testing.
I doubt Wine can really help in such areas, because it still is Windows code calling Windows DLLs and not Linux Libraries.

Sure. But you can still tackle 80% of the development time, right?