Re: Linux port progress

Hi Guys,

I've always liked the idea of having the Smalltalk IDE separated from
the running Smalltalk image process.  I think this is a good idea for
dozens of reasons..  For one, doing serious changes to some
fundamental classes shouldn't take out your IDE if you make a serious
mistake..  Your client image process should crash and burn, and then
you might think that your change wasn't so smart.

An IDE can be written in anything -- Squeak, or some other Smalltalk..
and connect to a running Strongtalk image.  It is considerable amount
of work to get a comprehensive UI framework created -- either get
Squeak's lit up, wxWidgets, or what have you.  What isn't a
considerable amount of work is to fire up a socket or some
communication mechanisim to communicate to a running image, and be
able to manipulate it -- from Squeak, or whatever.  This would be the
first step in creating a GUI debugger, traditional code browsers, etc.

Since you don't need (any) gui on linux, and all your GUI is in
Squeak, you're work is then done!  We score points for productivity,
not elegance.. but it's immediately productive, and the ball can roll
much quicker.  This allows the bootstrapping process of getting more
GUI tools (perhaps wxWidgets) and others all happy on linux/windows/
osx/etc..  Without good IDE's and debuggers, the work of creating such
a wxWidgets framework would be ridiculous, especially for a resource-
starved project such as this.  It would be much quicker to do all that
deveopment work on Squeak and then have it ported wholesale to
Strongtalk, and that is probably how it will go.  Improving and fixing
up wxSqueak is one option.  The other is to take some of the SWIG work
I've done (http://commonsmalltalk.wikispaces.com/) and generate a
wxWidgets (or maybe QT) interface using SWIG (even on Squeak), and
perhaps merging that with some of the wxSqueak code, and improving
that on Squeak first.. then once it's working the way we want, we
could just generate the same interface on Strongtalk and for the most
part it should essentially light up.  Or maybe getting the Squeak GUI
would be an easier task.

In any case, you need a UI to bootstrap it all with..  and using an
existing cross-platform UI that is already built is the shortest
path.  It's also not throw-away work because eventually much of it
could be easily ported to Strongtalk when it evolves to have those
foundations.  The communication layer required is also not throw-away
work because the idea of having the IDE separated from your running
image is a good one.

Hope that gives some insight,

Ian

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