VA Smalltalk Update

John O’Keefe
Principal Smalltalk Architect
Instantiations, Inc.

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 But first, the rebirth of
Instantiations
• Instantiations’ roots are in Smalltalk development tools
• We licensed Smalltalk technology from IBM and grew
• The Smalltalk tools were very good, so we redid them for
Java and grew
• and redid them again for Eclipse and grew more
• Google liked the Java tools, so they bought that part of
Instantiations
• and Instantiations took the money and went back to its roots
• Instantiations is now positioned to successfully respond to
customer requests for a 21st Century VA Smalltalk
• VA Smalltalk...Onward and Upward!

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Recent Events

• Growing Engineering staff

• Added Donald MacQueen, Principal Smalltalk Engineer
• Looking for more

• University out-reach
• Hasso Plattner Institute Bachelor Project
• Interested in more

• User out-reach
• Conference participation
• VA Smalltalk Forum -> VA Smalltalk Google Group
• Will be aggregated on http://forum.world.st
• Existing forum content still available (static)

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Previous Releases

• V8.0 (May 2009)

• Seaside, Tabbed Browsers, Documentation delivery system

• V8.0.1 (November 2009)

• Seaside update, ‘cdecl’ calling convention

• V8.0.2 (May 2010)

• Seaside update, GLORP

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 VA Smalltalk V8.0.3
February 2011

• Web interface
• Seaside support updated to V3.0.2
• Improved WSDL schema import diagnostic

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 VA Smalltalk V8.0.3
February 2011

• Web interface
• Seaside support updated to V3.0.2
• Improved WSDL schema import diagnostic

• Graphical User Interface

• CwMultiLineTextPrompter

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 CwTextPrompter

• Scrollable, not sizeable

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 CwMultiLineTextPrompter

• Sizeable, scrollable

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 VA Smalltalk V8.0.3
February 2011

• Web interface
• Seaside support updated to V3.0.2
• Improved WSDL schema import diagnostic

• Graphical User Interface

• CwMultiLineTextPrompter
• Development Tools
• NLS Application Enabler Tool
• NLS Catalog (.CAT) Editor
• Browser performance improvements

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 NLS Application Enabler Tool

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 NLS Application Enabler Tool

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 NLS Application Enabler Tool

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 NLS Catalog (.CAT) Editor

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 NLS Catalog (.CAT) Editor

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 NLS Catalog (.CAT) Editor

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 VA Smalltalk V8.0.3
February 2011

• Platform Interface
• TzSpecificLocalTimeToSystemTime PlatformFunction on
Windows
• Windows .EXE and .DLL files have function-specific
descriptions
• Improved error diagnostics for memory allocation errors
• written to log file

• VM Interfaces
• New APIs for string conversion
• EsIsString
• EsStringToCString
• EsCStringToString

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 VA Smalltalk V8.0.3
February 2011

• Platforms
• Ubuntu 10.10
• Fedora Core 14

• Documentation
• New online documentation
• VA Assist
• Widget/Kit Controls
• GF/ST

• Support
• 40+ bug fixes

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Looking to the Future

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Future Releases

• Release schedule is about twice a year

• Next release is planned for August 2011
• Current information available in Product Roadmap
• http://www.instantiations.com/products/roadmap.html

• Content based on requirements from:

• Direct customer interactions
• Forums
• Support cases
• Internals

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Priority Technologies

• Internationalization
• Web interface
• Middleware
• GUI Look and Feel
• Development Tools
• Security
• Performance and Scalability
• Platforms
• External Interfaces
• Other

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Next Release Planned Content
Major Items

• Internationalization
• Uniform UTF-8 input/output
• Web interface
• Seaside 3.x
• Continuation support

• GUI Look and Feel

• Additional Windows Common Controls
• Specific controls TBD (Rebar, Calendar, Task Dialog, etc.)
• Supported at CW, ABT and WB level

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Next Release Planned Content
Major Items

• Development Tools
• Improved Changes Browser & Merge Tool
• Code Assist (auto-complete)
• New ‘Settings’ framework

• Other
• Infrastructure
• Deprecation exception support
• Logging framework

• Installation
• Single installer for Client and Manager
• Seamless with Windows UAC (User Account Control)

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Next Release Planned Content
Other Items

• Web interface
• HTTP chunked transfer encoding
• GUI Look and Feel
• TIFF 4
• Middleware
• Improved DB2 Stored Procedures
• GLORP improvements
• Security
• “Basic” security framework (consolidate existing
OpenSSL wrappers)
• External Interfaces
• JNIPort

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Next Release Planned Content
Removed Items

• Platforms
• Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2000 (all versions)
• Microsoft support ended July, 2010
• Support in V8.0.3 and earlier continues on best-can-do basis

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Future Releases
Candidate Items

• Internationalization
• Full Unicode/UTF-8 (including VM)
• Web interface
• Seaside 3.x
• SST Servlet multipart forms
• Web services tooling improvements
• Web services debugging tools/doc
• Validating XML parser

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Future Releases
Candidate Items

• GUI Look and Feel

• GTK+ 2.x on Linux
• Additional Windows Common Controls
• Additional icon/image support
• Backport widgets from add-ons
• Development Tools
• Monticello importer
• New ‘Settings’ dialog
• Consolidate all settings using new ‘Settings’ framework
• Middleware
• GLORP infrastructure improvements
• GLORP Programmer’s Reference
• Active Records built on GLORP
• TCP/IP V6

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Future Releases
Candidate Items

• Security
• “Full” security framework -- OpenSSL 1.0 wrappers
• Performance and Scalability
• Incremental garbage collection
• 64-bit Smalltalk
• Class library performance hotspots
• Integrate KES/Stats tool
• Platform
• Windows Services control moved to Smalltalk
• External Interfaces
• .NET/C#

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Future Releases
Candidate Items

• Other
• Installation
• Install/Repair/Uninstall

• Class Libraries
• Collection hashing policies
• Collection sorting policies

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 How Do You Get VA Smalltalk?

• Download evaluation copy

• http://www.instantiations.com/products/vasmalltalk/download.html

• Buy development licenses

• http://www.instantiations.com/products/purchase.html

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 How Do You Get VA Smalltalk?

• Download evaluation copy

• Buy development licenses
• Download development build

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Development Builds

• Started as an experiment in
• Early delivery
• Continuous integration

• Availability
• Announced on VA Smalltalk Forum and
comp.lang.smalltalk
• Download from VA Smalltalk website
• Irregular schedule
• Documentation updated to match build
• Windows and Linux only
• Fix-list for build on VA Smalltalk forum

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 How Do I Get VA Smalltalk?

• Download evaluation copy

• Buy development licenses
• Download development build
• Be a committer on an Open Source project

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Open Source Project Committer

• Instantiations will donate a perpetual VA

Smalltalk license
• to committers
• working on non-commercial open source project
• Hint: release something to VAStGoodies.com

• No charge
• Details
• http://www.instantiations.com/company/open-source.html

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 How Do I Get VA Smalltalk?

• Download evaluation copy

• Buy development licenses
• Download development build
• Be a committer on an Open Source project
• Be an educational institution

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Academic Licenses

• Accredited educational institutions

• Teaching staff
• Students

• No charge
• Details
• http://www.instantiations.com/products/academic-license-
program.html

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.

 Contact us

• General information
• info@instantiations.com
• Sales
• sales@instantiations.com
• Support
• vast-support@instantiations.com
• Me
• john_okeefe@instantiations.com

Copyright © 2011, Instantiations, Inc.