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http://box3.squeak.org:8624

The Altitude web framework with a Twitter Bootstrap HTML/CSS template has laid the foundation for a new homepage for Squeak. There are still lots of details to marshal. Not being an expert web site designer, it’s a good idea to throw the question open to the world. What change would you make to this site to improve it?

Tim Rowledge is working on the Raspberry Pi. There are old sources for a RiscOS virtual machine at http://www.squeakvm.org. They have been obsolete for a while. With this new platform, Tim is going to bake an updated RiscOS virtual machine for Squeak that works on the Raspberry Pi computer. Pi will be served early in 2013.

SqueakSource is winding down. If you have a project there, you need to start thinking about moving it to either SqueakSource3 or SmalltalkHub. In the near future SqueakSource will take a new shape. It may be read only. The files may be stored in a mirror site with a clunky web interface. Move your project to a new home before you suffer a surprise.

David T. Lewis has created 64-bit images that run on the standard interpreter (non-Cog) virtual machine. He has written a script that instructs the SystemTracer to create a 64-bit image. Proof of the success of his experiment can be seen at the Squeak’s continuous integration server. The full announcement can be found here:

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2012-November/166422.html

http://www.squeakci.org 

Squeak has been experimenting with a Jenkins continuous integration server at a beta site for several months. With the assistance of the Sofware Freedom Conservancy, Squeak secured a virtual private server from Gandi hosting. This is now the new and permanent home of the Jenkins server.

Mozilla:  “There is no data. There is only XUL!”

Pavel Krivanek has released Phobos for Squeak. Xul is a technology from Mozilla to create native GUI applications. Pavel has created a server back end based on Seaside that connects to the Xul created applications. The regular Phobos framework can be downloaded from the Google Code site. The Squeak version of the server code can be installed with the script that came with with the release announcement.

Ghostbusters: “There is no Dana. There is only ZUUL!”

The Squeak project aimed at creating a tiny kernel has released a new version. Double clicking the application starts the tiny image, which broadcasts a webpage on localhost. The web page presents a link to start the development image environment, which provides an open browser window for inspecting the classes of the tiny running image.

David T. Lewis has released a build script for the Unix virtual machine. You feed it into a starting image, things happen, and a vm is produced. It’s a great time saver and reading the script is a super way to learn the basics of vm compilation.

Squeak took possession of a new Virtual Server from Gandi.net provided courtesy of our legal home, the  Software Freedom Conservancy. The existing Jenkins server will be moved over to the new location and expanded to manage more jobs. Those jobs will not just be for running tests on the trunk image, but for virtual machine compilation. It is to be hoped that having a working start-to-finish build script that anybody can run will help to document the process and  make it more accessible to all Squeakers.

Summer’s over, so it’s time to see what the Google Summer Of Code has produced. The projects and their completed source code can be found at this Summer Of Code page.

As with the ESUG Technology Innovation Awards there are some browsers, profilers, and visualization tools. The Hazelnut project aims to create a tiny kernel image. There is an online interactive Smalltalk tutorial, which is not actually online. You can download it as a tarball. Tanker will allow you to use Fuel for package management. The HMI project connects Amber as a front end with Pharo as a back end.

Congratulations to Janko Mivsek and Carla F. Griggio for making this year’s GSOC happen.