I like it :) Adrian
On Dec 7, 2010, at 19:30 , Dale Henrichs wrote: > I was thinking about a number of things in the shower this morning and then > it occurred to me that it would be interesting to create a shell environment > INSIDE a Smalltalk vm. > > It wouldn't be a complete environment, but it would include a small set of > standard unix utilities: > > - awk > - sed > - grep > > the "directory structure" would be the package structure in the image (or > maybe multiple views on the image contents) with the basic idea that you 'cd' > into a class where there is a 'file' that contains the class attributes. you > then 'cd instance/all' and you are in a "directory" of methods where you can > 'vi at:put:' and have a vi-like editor come up on the source of the at:put: > method of course awk, grep, and sed work on all of these 'source files'... > there would be 'executable files' that are simply workspaces ... > > I know that folks have externalized files, but I don't know if anyone has > internalized the shell environment ... > > The reason for internalizing the shell is that it becomes easy to transition > to the debugger and other traditional browsers/windows. > > The big reason for internalizing the shell is to provide a unix-like > interface for Smalltalk that might make transition to the Smalltalk tools > easier for folks new to Smalltalk. > > The secondary reason (and probably just as important) for internalizing the > shell, is that the hard-core Smalltalk developers might actually find some > utility in using the "smalltalk shell" in the normal course of development > and if hard-core developers use it, it will be maintained and might lead to > other interesting things... > > The idea is that the entire "smalltalk shell" would be implemented in > Smalltalk so you could bring up browsers with a command ... > > I've been thinking wistfully back to the days when I lived inside of Emacs in > the days before every terminal had a mouse ... back then I put my hands on > the keyboard at the start of the day and they stayed there the entire day all > window navigation was done via the keyboard ... I lost all of that once I > started doing development in Smalltalk... > > Anyway that about covers todays "ideas from the shower"... > > Dale >
