Squeak installation for the ignorant

I've just been re-installing an old Squeak, and installing a new one,
from a position of zero knowledge, and I'd like to make a plea for
things to be simplified for inexperienced users.

Firstly, please advertise ftp.squeak.org more extensively on the web pages;
since I didn't know it existed it took me ten days to find it, and then by
chance, and it solved a number of my problems.

I started out with a slightly broken version of Squeak 3.10.2; the browser
didn't work, but it ran Scratch successfully, which was all I needed it for,
so I left it alone for a couple of years.  Finally I decided to re-install
it - a modern Squeak needed a more modern glibc, which I didn't want.

Next request - please, please sort out the archive file names. It took me
some time to realise that *src* and *Sources* files were in fact different
things, and it would be really helpful if all VM files had 'vm' somewhere
in their name, and image files 'image'.  As it is, I was trying to pick
working file sets (for Linux) from sets of file names such as:

   Squeak-3.7-5989.image.tar.gz
   Squeak-3.7-7.i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
   Squeak-3.10-1.i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
   Squeak3.10.2-7179-basic.zip
   Squeak-4.0.3.2202-linux_i386.tar.gz
   Squeak-4.0.3.2202-src.tar.gz
   unix-4.0.3-2202.tar.gz
   Squeak-4.10.2.2614-linux_i386.tar.gz
   (No apparent image for this one)

My guess was that the 3.7 set contained the canonical names (omitting the
SqueakVxx.sources.gz files), but the later sets, the ones I wanted, didn't
seem to match up.  It would be helpful if there was a list somewhere of
exactly which filename (on the site) pairs with what.

Third request - installing 4.2 was relatively straightforward, but the error
message from the squeak shell script:

cannot find VM to run image '/usr/lib/squeak/4.0.3-2202/squeakvm' with  
option ''

is pretty unhelpful, given that the file exists.  Once Squeak is running
the -help option is extensive, but the shell script really does need to
respond to "squeak -help" with some sort of description of its arguments,
or the names of the directories where it's looking for the VM and the image
files.  It must know them.  Interestingly, for the current Squeak I ended up
with a Squeak that identifies itself as version 4.2-10966, a VM (presumably)
which calls itself 4.10.2-2614, and a source file version 4.1.  It is far
from clear how these version numbers are related, but they do in fact work.

Anyhow, Squeak 4.2 is an enormous improvement on 3.x for the inexperienced
user, so it's worth the trouble of installing it.  Sadly, Scratch can't load
its program files any more, but that's a problem for another day.

Will

Will,

Thank you for asking. I realize that you use a Linux/Unix installation.

Problems like the ones you encounter prompted me to use the Squeak
All-In-One packages when working in Linux the last years.

On MSWindows the whole setup is comparatively straightforward.

You need to get the correct image/source file pair, a VM and the sources file.
As for 4.4. they are now all in the same directory

http://ftp.squeak.org/4.4/

Will, as you write about 4.2 I assume you have not tried out the
installation with 4.4. yet.


I realize that David Lewis posts good instructions from time to time
how to compile a VM on Linux from the source. Maybe it is time to do
this again, David?

In any case the search keywords are
   How to build a standard Unix interpreter VM on Linux using a Squeak
trunk image

Regards
Hannes

On 22/01/13 9:27 AM, H. Hirzel wrote:
>
> You need to get the correct image/source file pair, a VM and the sources file.

That should be "image/changes" file pair, to avoid further confusing a
new user.

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 02:27:08PM +0000, H. Hirzel wrote:
The instructions are on squeakvm.org, see http://squeakvm.org/unix/devel.html.
They are getting a bit out of date, but still usable I think. Yes, I should
update them.

Being a lazy person, I have been trying to update the instructions in the
form of an executable Smalltalk script so that I don't need to keep refreshing
the web pages quite so often. If anyone with a Linux computer wants to give
this a try, I'd appreciate some feedback. You need Linux with Subversion
and CMake installed, plus the usual C compilers that come with your distribution.

Download this script file:

  http://squeakci.org/job/InterpreterVM/ws/VMUnixBuild.st

And then use VMUnixBuild.st as a start script:

  $ squeak myImage VMUnixBuild.st

You should be able to sit back and watch as your image loads all of the
necessary VMMaker and plugin packages, downloads the latest Subversion platform
sources, generates the VM sources, and does a configure and build.

Please let me know if this works (or not).

Dave


>
> In any case the search keywords are
>    How to build a standard Unix interpreter VM on Linux using a Squeak
> trunk image
>
> Regards
> Hannes