Squeak Etoys release candidate
30 September, 2009
Timothy Falconer wrote to the squeak-dev mailing list to announce the Squeak Etoys 4 release candidate, in preparation for final release on 21st October.
This release is the product of nine months of work by the Etoys software team, and several weeks of sprinting by Bert Freudenberg, Yoshiki Ohshima, Scott Wallace and Timothy.
The Etoys team are now looking for your input: Timothy says “Please help us test the new Etoys! We want to make sure that it’s rock solid before getting used in schools and homes throughout the world”.
You can download the Etoys 4 release candidate at http://squeakland.org/download under “Release Candidates”.
Highlights of Etoys 4 include:
- loading and sharing projects directly to the central Squeakland Showcase
- fully “license clean”, so that it can be included in Linux distros
- improved toolbar and viewer
- optional drop-down categories for the project info box
- lots of fixes and new translations throughout
To learn more about what’s new in Etoys 4, you can watch an interview with Scott Wallace or an introduction to the new beta showcase.
If you find any problems in the release candidate, you can try the Etoys chat channel, or post in the forums, or if you’re able to reproduce the error, add a ticket to the issue tracker.
Timothy passes on special thanks to everyone who made suggestions or helped the team to test the betas, saying “We’d be nowhere without our community!”
Smalltalks 2009
23 September, 2009
Following on from their high-profile presence at ESUG this year, the Argentinian Smalltalk community are preparing to host their third annual domestic Smalltalk conference, Smalltalks 2009.
Running from 19th to 21st November in Buenos Aires, the conference’s goal is to “gather both the Argentine and International Smalltalk community to get connected sharing our work and experience with regards to Smalltalk or related topics”.
The conference will have two streams: “Research and Education” for research and education work done with Smalltalk in universities and public or private
entities; and “Industry and Development” for presentations related to Smalltalk software developed by companies or individuals, both public and private.
In addition, the event will host a Smalltalk programming contest. As in previous years, well known personalities from the international community will attend the conference.
All those connected with Smalltalk, be it faculty, students, researchers, developers or entrepreneurs, are invited to participate, free of charge, as presenters and members of the audience.
In addition, early registrants get a great-looking T-shirt for free, so get your bookings in now!
New Development Model, two months on.
17 September, 2009
It has been two months since the Squeak Oversight Board first put forward their “New Community Development Model”. At the time the proposal caused a lot of heated debate on the squeak-dev mailing list, with concerns being expressed that similar efforts in the past had had little lasting impact, and had caused great frustration for those pushing those earlier efforts.
The motives of the Board were to “get rid of as many hurdles as possible in the contribution process [and] to enable the community at large to improve Squeak, the core of the system and its supporting libraries”.
So, two months down the line, how’s it doing?
If sheer volume is any criterion, it looks like a great success with over 500 packages uploaded as patches to 3.10.2 and over 40,000 downloads from the trunk (see bottom of the linked page for up to date statistics).
The results of all this activity are available to use and test in the daily updated image published at http://ftp.squeak.org/trunk/ (needs a recent VM). If you want to contribute, you can add new patches at http://source.squeak.org/inbox/, or ask one of the current developers for access to the developers repository at http://source.squeak.org/trunk.
If you just want to get an idea of what’s going on, check out the commit logs that are getting posted to the squeak-dev mailing list, and to the #squeak irc channel on freenode.
ESUG 2009 wrap up – Best Ever?
8 September, 2009
All the participants should now have safely returned home after a hugely successful ESUG conference. Participants from around the world (including an Argentinian football team) shrugged off the economic climate to spend a week in Brest and share their experiences and aspirations with fellow Smalltalkers.
Highlights included:
- Presentations from a range of speakers from industry and research backgrounds, including Cloudfork, DeltaStreams, WebVelocity.
- Tutorials for Seaside, Aida, SqueakNOS, and many, many, more.
- The Innovation Technology Awards, awarded to Retrobjects which is a great C64 emulator, PhidgetLab which uses eToys to interact with real world objects, SqueakNOS: a lightning-fast bootable Squeak image, and Glamour which is a flexible engine for scripting Smalltalk browsers.
- Updates on various Smalltalk platforms: VisualWorks, VA Smalltalk, Object Studio, Gemstone and Pharo.
- And lots of great opportunities to network and socialise, including the inaugural ESUG Blind Date!
Check out the photos for a flavour of the conference: Adriaan, Hernan, James, Yuri. and many more.
Comments on the web have been very positive too:
- “ESUG was a blast, totally.”
- “Definitely the best Smalltalk conference I’ve ever been to.”
- “a great conference”
- “a pleasure to attend every year”
- “fascinating, inspiring and enjoyable”
- “it’s been intense”
With reviews like that, next year’s conference in Barcelona is bound to be a sell-out, so remember to book early!
(Photo from Yuri’s collection)
ESUG 2009 kicks off, VAST goes free, Technology Awards break records
1 September, 2009
ESUG 2009 has got off to a successful start, with a packed programme of events lined up for the next few days.
After an introduction from Stefan Ducasse for ESUG and local organisers Alain Plantec and Loic Lagadec, Georg Heeg looked at Smalltalk’s history and future direction and James Foster ran through news from the Gemstone world, including brief discussions of Metacello and Scaffolding.
After lunch there were a series of shorter presentations including the “academic strand” of the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies.
In the evening, Instantiations sponsored the reception event in the evening, and took the opportunity to announce free editions of Visual Age Smalltalk for academic and open source usage, which was very well received!
Attendees also had the opportunity to see the entries for the ESUG 2009 Innovation Technology Awards. A record-breaking 21 applications were entered this year, and the results of the voting will be announced at the conference social event on Thursday.
(Photo from Adrian van Os’ site)
