Squeak 4.2


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Squeak 4.2

Last updated at 6:53 pm UTC on 1 March 2011

Release Date

February 4th, 2011.

Download Link

http://ftp.squeak.org/4.2/

Release notes

Compatible with the new Cog VM which provides roughly a 3x, across-the-board, performance improvement. Specific Benchmarks vary much more widely (from 1x to 5x, with some people claiming 10x for specifics).
Compatible with signature Squeak packages.
Many enhancements, fixes, documentation and performance improvements to the class-library and IDE tools.
Improved package-dependencies.
A new number parser allows greater flexibility in the expression of numbers.
Finalization enhancements.
An interface to the operating system stdio (initially supported only on the Cog VM).
Stricter Rectangles assert screen coordinate orientation. Empty Rectangles no longer #intersect: anything.
A tidier image and code-base. Introduced a cleanUp protocol, removed the last direct users of CrLfFileStream, j3 support, SyntaxError, and more. Various packages and fonts can now be unloaded, if a smaller image is desired.
Replaced the last of the underscore assignments with ANSI assignments.
A refactoring and unification of Smalltalk and SmalltalkImage globals.
Support for translucent fonts.
Squeak's internal timer clock has been improved from millisecond to microsecond level precision.
Many enhancements to the internal text editor.
Added an efficient window-resizing gesture, allowing Squeak windows to be quickly and easily manipulated.
A new HelpSystem and Help menu guide new users.
Restored support for MVC projects.
SUnit tests now may timeout.
Improved Squeak's command-line interface to properly support relative-path qualification to the input script.

VM Tasks

Description	Possible Resources	Notes
Refactor VM source base to make objectMemory an instVar.	Eliot Miranda?
Merge some, not necessarily all, improvements made to standard VM since 3.9-7 into new VM	David Lewis?
Merge new Cog primitives (mirror prims, mutex prims, 64-bit time prims, doNamedPrim, etc) into Interpreter	Eliot Miranda?
Merge Cog platform float order into Interpreter	Eliot Miranda?
Merge stdio support into VM trunk	Eliot Miranda
Merge Linux platform sources	Ian Piumarta?
Merge Windows platform sources	Andreas Raab?
Merge Macintosh platform sources	John McIntosh?
Improve error message associated with attempting to run an older image on the Cog VM.	Andreas
Finalization improvement	Igor Stasenko
Better compatibility between Cog and non-Cog images and VM's	David Lewis
OSProcess issues (stdOut, stdErr)
Verify Linux platforms:
—> Red Hat
—> Ubuntu
—> Other?
Organize VM Build systems? (two)

Development Image Tasks

Description	Possible Resources	Notes
Integrate Cryptography	Rob Withers, Chris Muller
Documentation	?
PackageOrganizer default unregisterPackageNamed: #FlexibleVocabularies
Fix pretty print bug (duplicating comments)	Chris Muller
Replace #selectedMessageIndex, et al with #selectedMessage in the browsers	Chris Muller
Integrate new O-Completion
Make a new ReleaseBuilder method?
How does SystemVersion get updated?

Core Image

Will we have a core image 4.2?

Improvements for 4.2 (for release notes)

A new VM, known as "Cog" provides roughly universal 3X speedup.

Compatibility

Both Cog and Stack Interpreter cannot run old, non-closure images.

Standard Interpreter

Want to see if this can be phased out as of the 4.2 release in lieu of the new Stack Interpreter and Cog.

Stack Interpreter

Use a thread or interval timer to schedule input polling instead of an expensive and erratic counter, and using alloc to allocate its stack zone, both of these are optional extras.