Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Stephane Ducasse]

> About deprecation, I found it fast because I think FFI as a key component of
> a language. I imagine similar problems could happen when going from Morphic
> to its successor (Bloc?). Even with a stable API, I expect some code to
> explicitely depends on Morphic and break in the next GUI framework. I do not
> think this can be avoided. I am aware that maintenance is very costly and
> that it is always hard to be sure new users do not get caught in this kind
> of change. (As far as I understand the old MVC framework was kept quite long
> along with the at-the-time new Morphic to ensure smooth transition.)

For Morphic I think that we will see but Bloc should not be killed on
the altar of Morphic compatibility.
We do not have much to keep from Morphic.


>
> Note that I am not trying to claim that Pharo generally is bad or worse than
> another language. As a new user, my expectations were quite high after
> spending a few weeks learning the language, going through the MOOC, being
> able to tinker with the UI (looking at everything, modifying the World Menu,
> etc.), looking into the details of the bytecode and the VM. All of these
> worked very well and I still do think that Pharo is a great of software as I
> wrote in a previous question. Even when facing the UI problem in Pharo 5 due
> to old FFI syntax, I was able to hack into the code and get it work. In
> another language hitting an "internal" problem often is a dead end.
>
> I cannot tackle the problems I highlighted by myself. But with the help of
> someone who knows how to address them in the Pharo's way, I am willing to
> help.

Esteban told me that it was decided that the parser was not maintain
for the ffi.
Now what would be great is to port the library to Pharo and newFFI.


> About dependencies and version, I knew of Metacello configurations when I
> wrote my first message and I was thinking of Pharo version (more precisely
> the versions of core packages and dependencies as opposed to other external
> packages that should be loaded on top of a freshly downloaded image).
> I did not know that Pharo version was in configurations. So I had a look at
> ConfigurationOfZeroMQ and maybe it keeps on being an exception but I did not
> find any dependency on Pharo version in it.

it is normal because we do not have yet metadata for loaded packages

 However it declares a dependency
> on FFI version 1.4, which eventually is better than explicitely setting a
> dependency on a Pharo version. I also had a look at the "validate" class
> method and its comment that mentions "MetacelloMCVersionValidator". How is
> this validation mechanism triggered? I could work on it and modify the
> source code loader(s) so that instead of getting a syntax error in Pharo 6 I
> get an error or a critical warning from the validator. (I loaded the package
> by adding the corresponding repository in the Monticello browser and loading
> ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ last versions.)
>
> I eventually found what you talked about. In ConfigurationOfFFI, "stable:"
> method lists the FFI versions that Pharo versions supports. The convention
> for versioning is not clear to me: old FFI is supposed to work up to Pharo 4
> and the spec says FFI should be 1.7 to 1.9, which would mean that if a
> package needs version x, any version y>=x is ok, but from Pharo 5 (which
> requires FFI 1.10.1) it should fail, which would mean that version x should
> be matched exactly (or an interval should be defined).
> In Pharo 6 ConfigurationOfUnifiedFFI>>version_0_26_8 declares a dependency
> on FFI-Kernel ‘FFI-Kernel-EstebanLorenzano.45’, which I do not understand.
> Maybe here I can remove FFI dependencies. (Is this what you meant when
> saying you could have deprecated it but did not do it?)
> Besides ConfigurationOfFFI is not included in a freshly downloaded Pharo
> image (I checked for Pharo 5), I found a reference to it in
> ConfigurationOfUnifiedFFI (in the "ffi:" method) and manually added the
> corresponding repository (MetaRepoForPharo50) in Monticello browser and
> loaded the last version of ConfigurationOfFFI. So it seems that the info is
> not available by default.


That I do not know :)


> I had also a look at FFI-Kernel package (the object as found by running
> "RPackageOrganizer default packages select: [:p | p name = #'FFI-Kernel’].")
> and could not find any version info. Is it correct that the version info of
> a package is only available through ConfigurationOf... and is not included
> in the package object?
>
> If I understand well, a way to correct the problem would be:
> - to ensure (or set it as an option for a start) that Metacello validation
> is triggered even when loading source code and let the user choose from an
> option whether it wants errors at loading stage or only warnings (and expect
> problems when running).
> - add all the ConfigurationOf that are in "Pharo/MetaRepoForPharo50/main"
> repository in the corresponding official image (maybe rather do this for
> 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[bdurin]

Hi Stef,

Thank you for your explanations!

About deprecation, I found it fast because I think FFI as a key component of
a language. I imagine similar problems could happen when going from Morphic
to its successor (Bloc?). Even with a stable API, I expect some code to
explicitely depends on Morphic and break in the next GUI framework. I do not
think this can be avoided. I am aware that maintenance is very costly and
that it is always hard to be sure new users do not get caught in this kind
of change. (As far as I understand the old MVC framework was kept quite long
along with the at-the-time new Morphic to ensure smooth transition.)

Note that I am not trying to claim that Pharo generally is bad or worse than
another language. As a new user, my expectations were quite high after
spending a few weeks learning the language, going through the MOOC, being
able to tinker with the UI (looking at everything, modifying the World Menu,
etc.), looking into the details of the bytecode and the VM. All of these
worked very well and I still do think that Pharo is a great of software as I
wrote in a previous question. Even when facing the UI problem in Pharo 5 due
to old FFI syntax, I was able to hack into the code and get it work. In
another language hitting an "internal" problem often is a dead end.

I cannot tackle the problems I highlighted by myself. But with the help of
someone who knows how to address them in the Pharo's way, I am willing to
help.

About dependencies and version, I knew of Metacello configurations when I
wrote my first message and I was thinking of Pharo version (more precisely
the versions of core packages and dependencies as opposed to other external
packages that should be loaded on top of a freshly downloaded image).
I did not know that Pharo version was in configurations. So I had a look at
ConfigurationOfZeroMQ and maybe it keeps on being an exception but I did not
find any dependency on Pharo version in it. However it declares a dependency
on FFI version 1.4, which eventually is better than explicitely setting a
dependency on a Pharo version. I also had a look at the "validate" class
method and its comment that mentions "MetacelloMCVersionValidator". How is
this validation mechanism triggered? I could work on it and modify the
source code loader(s) so that instead of getting a syntax error in Pharo 6 I
get an error or a critical warning from the validator. (I loaded the package
by adding the corresponding repository in the Monticello browser and loading
ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ last versions.)

I eventually found what you talked about. In ConfigurationOfFFI, "stable:"
method lists the FFI versions that Pharo versions supports. The convention
for versioning is not clear to me: old FFI is supposed to work up to Pharo 4
and the spec says FFI should be 1.7 to 1.9, which would mean that if a
package needs version x, any version y>=x is ok, but from Pharo 5 (which
requires FFI 1.10.1) it should fail, which would mean that version x should
be matched exactly (or an interval should be defined).
In Pharo 6 ConfigurationOfUnifiedFFI>>version_0_26_8 declares a dependency
on FFI-Kernel ‘FFI-Kernel-EstebanLorenzano.45’, which I do not understand.
Maybe here I can remove FFI dependencies. (Is this what you meant when
saying you could have deprecated it but did not do it?)
Besides ConfigurationOfFFI is not included in a freshly downloaded Pharo
image (I checked for Pharo 5), I found a reference to it in
ConfigurationOfUnifiedFFI (in the "ffi:" method) and manually added the
corresponding repository (MetaRepoForPharo50) in Monticello browser and
loaded the last version of ConfigurationOfFFI. So it seems that the info is
not available by default. 

I had also a look at FFI-Kernel package (the object as found by running
"RPackageOrganizer default packages select: [:p | p name = #'FFI-Kernel’].")
and could not find any version info. Is it correct that the version info of
a package is only available through ConfigurationOf... and is not included
in the package object?

If I understand well, a way to correct the problem would be:
- to ensure (or set it as an option for a start) that Metacello validation
is triggered even when loading source code and let the user choose from an
option whether it wants errors at loading stage or only warnings (and expect
problems when running).
- add all the ConfigurationOf that are in "Pharo/MetaRepoForPharo50/main"
repository in the corresponding official image (maybe rather do this for
Pharo60 which is still maintained) so that the validation gets all the
needed info
- as you mentioned in an earlier message ConfigurationOf for some "internal"
packages (included in a freshly downloaded Pharo image) are missing, so add
them, attribute them a version and set dependencies accordingly. (I can
help, it is a good way to learn about the internals of the language.)
Is it correct? (I can also work on the validator with some help.)

About correcting the specific problem I had in 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[bdurin]

Hi Marcus,
I would be happy to contribute to your experiment. Let me know.
Bruno



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Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Stephane Ducasse]

Hi

in fact I was wrong we do not support pragma for FFI and we could have
deprecated them but we did not.

Stef

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 5:15 PM, Stephane Ducasse
 wrote:
> Tx for the report
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 11:31 PM, bdurin  wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The RBParser
>> fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks down
>> the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand all
>> use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and
>> some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug. Overall
>> this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.
>>
>> In order to reproduce this:
>> - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
>> - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
>> - add the following repository
>> MCSmalltalkhubRepository
>> owner: 'panuw'
>> project: 'zeromq'
>> user: ''
>> password: ''
>> - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure if
>> the latter is needed)
>> - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: of the
>> ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error
>> (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
>> "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
>> apiZmqBind: s
>> ocket to: endpoint > - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red box:
>> then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you are
>> obstinate and lucky you will succeed in crashing the image.
>> - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground
>> RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint
>> cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) module:''zmq''>
>> ^self externalCallFailed'.
>> and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root cause is
>> that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined by
>> its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is not
>> a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and setting
>> the corresponding instance variables.)
>
>
>
>> 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
>> versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for zmq. It
>> dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years and a
>> half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).
>
> We maintain actively 2 versions on 5 OSes.
> On many system old libraries do not work on new versions.
> By definition I never believe that a version of Mac OS 9 is working on
> Mac OS 11 and Mac has a lot of money.
> A lot more than us.
>
>
>> I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed because
>> of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI mechanisms, I
>> quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in pragma
>> are not supported anymore.
>
> They still are but you probably hit an edge case.
>
>> I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
>> described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
>> declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already
>> switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I did not
>> try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).
>
> Normally we took care to be backward compatible to ease moving from
> one version to the other
> one. Esteban was on vacation and I asked him to have a look.
>
>
>> Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version is?
>> It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features used
>> by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
>> mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely to
>> work.
>
> People should
> - publish their package in the catalog of a given version.
> - have test
> - have a configuration because this configuration list also the
> version of Pharo.
>
>
>> Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago cannot
>> work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which dates
>> back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)?
>
> This is not a deprecation. This is probably just a case that was not handle.
> We spent 8 months developing a new FFI and there is still points to be added.
>
>> I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my mind,
>> either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system should
>> be there to help users.
>
> Please do not generalise from one case.
> We pay attention to make sure that people can move. Now
>
>>
>> 2) Another question about versions: Pharo 6 is out since June, Pharo 7 is
>> under development. What is the 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Stephane Ducasse]

Tx for the report


On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 11:31 PM, bdurin  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The RBParser
> fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks down
> the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand all
> use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and
> some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug. Overall
> this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.
>
> In order to reproduce this:
> - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
> - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
> - add the following repository
> MCSmalltalkhubRepository
> owner: 'panuw'
> project: 'zeromq'
> user: ''
> password: ''
> - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure if
> the latter is needed)
> - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: of the
> ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error
> (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
> "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
> apiZmqBind: s
> ocket to: endpoint  - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red box:
> then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you are
> obstinate and lucky you will succeed in crashing the image.
> - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground
> RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint
> cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) module:''zmq''>
> ^self externalCallFailed'.
> and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root cause is
> that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined by
> its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is not
> a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and setting
> the corresponding instance variables.)



> 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
> versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for zmq. It
> dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years and a
> half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).

We maintain actively 2 versions on 5 OSes.
On many system old libraries do not work on new versions.
By definition I never believe that a version of Mac OS 9 is working on
Mac OS 11 and Mac has a lot of money.
A lot more than us.


> I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed because
> of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI mechanisms, I
> quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in pragma
> are not supported anymore.

They still are but you probably hit an edge case.

> I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
> described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
> declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already
> switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I did not
> try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).

Normally we took care to be backward compatible to ease moving from
one version to the other
one. Esteban was on vacation and I asked him to have a look.


> Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version is?
> It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features used
> by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
> mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely to
> work.

People should
- publish their package in the catalog of a given version.
- have test
- have a configuration because this configuration list also the
version of Pharo.


> Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago cannot
> work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which dates
> back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)?

This is not a deprecation. This is probably just a case that was not handle.
We spent 8 months developing a new FFI and there is still points to be added.

> I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my mind,
> either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system should
> be there to help users.

Please do not generalise from one case.
We pay attention to make sure that people can move. Now

>
> 2) Another question about versions: Pharo 6 is out since June, Pharo 7 is
> under development. What is the status of Pharo 5? Already history or still
> relevant?

We do not actively back port fix to Pharo 50. But you can execute
Pharo 50 and we build regularly vms.



> I am asking because I corrected the problem of FFI declaration in pragma,
> but it seems to me that it is not useful to publish this change as starting
> from 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Marcus Denker]

> 
> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 4:35 PM, bdurin  wrote:
>> Hi Hannes,
>> 
>> Thanks for your help! I agree that loading in Pharo 4 (I guess) and
>> following your recipe works and is easy.
>> My concern is not specific to ZeroMQ though. In fact I discovered that
>> ZeroMQ package is just a very low-level bindings of Zeromq C API whereas I
>> thought it was something more like the python bindings of 0mq that provides
>> higher-level abstractions that are more useful. Besides the problem of
>> persisting the state of a 0mq application in the image is quite hard to
>> solve (and this was noted by the author of the Zeromq package). So I
>> probably shall go with python this time.
>> Beyond the specific problem of Zeromq package, I think there is something
>> inconsistent in trying to develop Smalltalk/Pharo as a self-contained
>> environment and not being able to load old code. In other languages, text
>> editor or IDE are external tools but they usually open any source code.
>> (That is why the title of my note is "Parser failure on FFI pragmas
>> declaration in Pharo 5" and not "Cannot load ZeroMQ package source code".)
>> I also wanted to point out that for people that are used to programming and
>> as such could rapidly wander in corner areas of the language, I felt a tool
>> / a procedure to manage dependencies and versions was missing.

I am working on and off on an experiment to allow to load (and compile!) 
syntactically
wrong code.
(the idea is that it compiles a runtime error what would normally be a static 
syntax error,
this is available by turning on the "Allow code with syntax errors” Setting).

This might not solve the FFI problem (need to look at that), but it will make 
loading strange
code easier…

Marcus

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Stephane Ducasse]

Bruno

There was a huge change in the FFI (in fact it was rewritten from the
ground) and you face a case where we were not backward compatible.
Nobody reported it to us before.

Now if you unzip the mcz you get the pharo text in plain mode.
It does not solve the problem of parsing but in that case you are
exactly in the same situation than other languages or I did not
understand your problem.

We are managing version and dependencies since years :) luckily.
The part that is missing is that every package loaded in the pharo
image cannot be used as dependent for external packages because of
lack of metadata.
We are working on having metadata for any package (being inside Pharo
or external).

I do not know what is used in ZeroMQ.
Now two questions:
- what are the abstractions that the python binding offers?
- what is the state of a 0mq application? Because we can serialise and
reload execution stack.
So the only things that we cannot serialize are active process so far.

Stef


On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 4:35 PM, bdurin  wrote:
> Hi Hannes,
>
> Thanks for your help! I agree that loading in Pharo 4 (I guess) and
> following your recipe works and is easy.
> My concern is not specific to ZeroMQ though. In fact I discovered that
> ZeroMQ package is just a very low-level bindings of Zeromq C API whereas I
> thought it was something more like the python bindings of 0mq that provides
> higher-level abstractions that are more useful. Besides the problem of
> persisting the state of a 0mq application in the image is quite hard to
> solve (and this was noted by the author of the Zeromq package). So I
> probably shall go with python this time.
> Beyond the specific problem of Zeromq package, I think there is something
> inconsistent in trying to develop Smalltalk/Pharo as a self-contained
> environment and not being able to load old code. In other languages, text
> editor or IDE are external tools but they usually open any source code.
> (That is why the title of my note is "Parser failure on FFI pragmas
> declaration in Pharo 5" and not "Cannot load ZeroMQ package source code".)
> I also wanted to point out that for people that are used to programming and
> as such could rapidly wander in corner areas of the language, I felt a tool
> / a procedure to manage dependencies and versions was missing.
>
> Regards,
> Bruno
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://forum.world.st/Parser-failure-on-FFI-pragmas-declaration-in-Pharo-5-tp4961737p4963381.html
> Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[bdurin]

Hi Hannes,

Thanks for your help! I agree that loading in Pharo 4 (I guess) and
following your recipe works and is easy.
My concern is not specific to ZeroMQ though. In fact I discovered that
ZeroMQ package is just a very low-level bindings of Zeromq C API whereas I
thought it was something more like the python bindings of 0mq that provides
higher-level abstractions that are more useful. Besides the problem of
persisting the state of a 0mq application in the image is quite hard to
solve (and this was noted by the author of the Zeromq package). So I
probably shall go with python this time.
Beyond the specific problem of Zeromq package, I think there is something
inconsistent in trying to develop Smalltalk/Pharo as a self-contained
environment and not being able to load old code. In other languages, text
editor or IDE are external tools but they usually open any source code.
(That is why the title of my note is "Parser failure on FFI pragmas
declaration in Pharo 5" and not "Cannot load ZeroMQ package source code".) 
I also wanted to point out that for people that are used to programming and
as such could rapidly wander in corner areas of the language, I felt a tool
/ a procedure to manage dependencies and versions was missing.

Regards,
Bruno



--
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http://forum.world.st/Parser-failure-on-FFI-pragmas-declaration-in-Pharo-5-tp4961737p4963381.html
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Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[H. Hirzel]

On 8/17/17, bdurin  wrote:

Hello Bruno

> Hi,
>

> In Pharo 6 it
> fails early with a nice syntax error but it still prevents me from getting
> the code into Pharo. ZeroMQ are just bindings that I can easily rewrite.

Good to know that you can easily rewrite the bindings.

In this case I suggest you load the ZeroMQ  [1] into the last Pharo
version which supports both variants. Good to have several Pharo
installations available for such purposes. They normally 'live' in a
subdirectory.

Fix it the Pharo version which easily supports it and save the mcz file.

Then load it into Pharo 6.

And learn how to submit it to the Pharo 6.0 catalog repository.

The whole process is not a big deal. Your contribution to upgrade the
library is welcome!

Regards
Hannes

[1] http://zeromq.org/

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Holger Freyther]

> On 18. Aug 2017, at 16:46, Denis Kudriashov  wrote:
> 
> @Esteban: Would you accept a change to the FFI-Pharo5Compat to not use the 
> currentScope variable/reduce error checking? Or would you accept it in a 
> FFI-Pharo6Compat package?
> I think it would help to be able to load the Nacl code in Pharo6 and then fix 
> it?
> 
> But you can just switch default compiler. Is not works for you? 

yes. But I think it gets more difficult in Pharo7? So being able to load old 
code to rewrite it would be nice. :)

holger

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Denis Kudriashov]

>
> @Esteban: Would you accept a change to the FFI-Pharo5Compat to not use the
> currentScope variable/reduce error checking? Or would you accept it in a
> FFI-Pharo6Compat package?
> I think it would help to be able to load the Nacl code in Pharo6 and then
> fix it?


But you can just switch default compiler. Is not works for you?

2017-08-18 10:20 GMT+02:00 Holger Freyther :

>
> > On 17. Aug 2017, at 19:37, Denis Kudriashov 
> wrote:
>
>
> Hey!
>
> > Yes.
> >
> > Also simple solution can be to override compiler of problem classes to
> return old compiler.
> >
> > I know it is better to rewrite code but it can be not simple task when
> there are a lot of ffi-methods.
>
>
> I ran into this problem with the wonderful (as it had a SHA256
> implementation) NaCl bindings.
>
>
> Pharo5:
>  * RBParser still has the currentScope variable and can import it
>  * Syntax highlighting ends in an exception (which I disabled)
>
> Pharo6:
>  * RBParser doesn't have currentScope anymore so I patched it out
>  * Syntax highlighting seems to work fine
>
>
> @Esteban: Would you accept a change to the FFI-Pharo5Compat to not use the
> currentScope variable/reduce error checking? Or would you accept it in a
> FFI-Pharo6Compat package?
>
> I think it would help to be able to load the Nacl code in Pharo6 and then
> fix it?
>
>
> what do you think?
>
> holger
>

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Holger Freyther]

> On 17. Aug 2017, at 19:37, Denis Kudriashov  wrote:


Hey!

> Yes. 
> 
> Also simple solution can be to override compiler of problem classes to return 
> old compiler. 
> 
> I know it is better to rewrite code but it can be not simple task when there 
> are a lot of ffi-methods.


I ran into this problem with the wonderful (as it had a SHA256 implementation) 
NaCl bindings.


Pharo5:
 * RBParser still has the currentScope variable and can import it
 * Syntax highlighting ends in an exception (which I disabled)

Pharo6:
 * RBParser doesn't have currentScope anymore so I patched it out
 * Syntax highlighting seems to work fine


@Esteban: Would you accept a change to the FFI-Pharo5Compat to not use the 
currentScope variable/reduce error checking? Or would you accept it in a 
FFI-Pharo6Compat package?

I think it would help to be able to load the Nacl code in Pharo6 and then fix 
it?


what do you think?

holger

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Denis Kudriashov]

Yes.

Also simple solution can be to override compiler of problem classes to
return old compiler.

I know it is better to rewrite code but it can be not simple task when
there are a lot of ffi-methods.


2017-08-17 13:17 GMT+02:00 Guillermo Polito :

>
>
> On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 1:09 PM, Denis Kudriashov 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Sorry, but we will not accept old pragma format (as I said, is invalid…
>>> and ugly ;) ).
>>
>>
>> But we will be able load old compiler (when it will be removed from
>> standard image) to support such old code
>>
>
> But then you should compile such code with the old compiler, not make opal
> compatible, no?
>
>
>>
>> 2017-08-17 11:48 GMT+02:00 Esteban Lorenzano :
>>
>>> hi,
>>>
>>> Old way to do FFI calls is no longer supported on Pharo, but this
>>> deprecation is very old (since Pharo 2). Now, in Pharo 4 we replaced the
>>> compiler (for OpalCompiler) and we no longer supported “pragma-like” calls,
>>> in part because they are “invalid” pragma calls (they do not agrees with
>>> pragma syntax) and in part because the way to go in pharo is using UFFI
>>> (before UFFI it was NB which was largely compatible).
>>>
>>> I don’t know why ZeroMQ bindings are made using old format, but the way
>>> to advance them is to
>>>
>>> > On 16 Aug 2017, at 23:31, bdurin  wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Hi,
>>> >
>>> > I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The
>>> RBParser
>>> > fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely
>>> breaks down
>>> > the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I
>>> understand all
>>> > use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed
>>> and
>>> > some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug.
>>> Overall
>>> > this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.
>>> >
>>> > In order to reproduce this:
>>> > - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
>>> > - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
>>> > - add the following repository
>>> > MCSmalltalkhubRepository
>>> >   owner: 'panuw'
>>> >   project: 'zeromq'
>>> >   user: ''
>>> >   password: ''
>>> > - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure
>>> if
>>> > the latter is needed)
>>> > - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to:
>>> of the
>>> > ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood
>>> error
>>> > (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
>>> > "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
>>> > apiZmqBind: s
>>> > ocket to: endpoint >> > - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red
>>> box:
>>> > then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you
>>> are
>>> > obstinate and lucky you will succeed in crashing the image.
>>> > - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground
>>> > RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint
>>> >   cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*)
>>> module:''zmq''>
>>> >   ^self externalCallFailed'.
>>> > and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root
>>> cause is
>>> > that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API
>>> defined by
>>> > its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so
>>> is not
>>> > a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and
>>> setting
>>> > the corresponding instance variables.)
>>> >
>>> > 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
>>> > versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for
>>> zmq. It
>>> > dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years
>>> and a
>>> > half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).
>>> > I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed
>>> because
>>> > of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI
>>> mechanisms, I
>>> > quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in
>>> pragma
>>> > are not supported anymore.
>>> > I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
>>> > described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
>>> > declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has
>>> already
>>> > switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I
>>> did not
>>> > try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).
>>> > Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version
>>> is?
>>> > It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features
>>> used
>>> > by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
>>> > mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is
>>> likely to
>>> > work.
>>> > Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[bdurin]

Hi,

Thank you Denis and Esteban for your help.
I agree, the way to go is to rewrite correct UFFI bindings. Denis' solution
seems fragile.

About my points 3 and 4 I think I was not clear. I did not want to force old
FFI syntax.

I explained why I thought that the way Pharo 5 was failing at deprecated
code was very misleading and gave a bad impression.
About developer tools in Pharo, as far as I understand ideally everything
should be done in Pharo, we should not have to use a text editor to develop,
etc. So we should be able to access legacy, deprecated source code from
within Pharo. This could work if the source code viewer did not enforce
strict parsing rules. In Pharo 5, it fails badly and late. In Pharo 6 it
fails early with a nice syntax error but it still prevents me from getting
the code into Pharo. ZeroMQ are just bindings that I can easily rewrite. But
what if I get the .mcz file of an old package whose code I do not know? It
would not load. To get its code, I would have to learn about the .mcz
format, dig into the .mcz archive and open the right file in a text editor
to get the code declarations one by one. (Or if I am smarter I could hack
FileIn to get the code declarations as an array of strings with no attempt
at compiling and then copy paste the pieces.) It would be nice to be able to
load an old deprecated code, let it run and fail and correct it live in the
debugger for example. It would be even nicer to have the old syntax
recognized and explicit warnings (or even suggested rewriting).

About item 4, I have no problem with Smalltalk syntax or it being OO down
the line. When I say that Pharo could be hard for people with programming
experience, I was refering to the fact that one get easily caught by version
problems, by legacy stuff that seems to be maintained and at some point stop
working (and unless you read a lot the mailing list, it can be quite
difficult to understand the source of the problem).
To put this into perspective, I can give 2 examples in python: numpy and
pandas. Numpy is a very mature library with very few problems. Most users of
python are CPython users (Python implemented in C) and uses numpy without
wondering. But I remember looking at pypy as a drop-in replacement for
cpython at a time when pypy was not very mature and it had not been easy to
find out that numy could not work with pypy because numpy depends on the
C-API (hence CPython). (Now pypy has a dedicated numpy project which is
correctly advertised.)
Pandas is a python library that changes a lot and is maintained by few
people. Often API or function behaviour changes from one version to the
next. But both the documentation and the code (which emits deprecation
warning when it detects old uses) help a lot the user in switching from one
version to the other or detecting potential problems with old code, often
without a complete error.
The idea is that we can deal with a dog that groans before biting and that
we tends to avoid dogs that bites without groaning before.

In Pharo, I understand that cleaning old code and getting things very robust
is very time-consuming and would not be worth the effort but having a way to
alert the user that something is legacy stuff would be great.
Maybe something like having the list of all packages and their version
included in a given image version on https://pharo.org could be useful.
Or having a process that maintain the state of all known packages in the
Smalltalk repositories: for example there would be 4 states, actively
developed, maintained, legacy and deprecated. "Actively developed" would be
manually set on all packages that are worked on for the new version (is
Iceberg in Pharo 7 a good example?). "Maintained" would be set on all
packages predating a given version but tested for the given version.
"Legacy" would be automatically set on all packages predating a given
version and not tested (so use at your own risk). "Deprecated" would be
manually set on packages that are reported as failing and are known to fail
because of new design (for example old FFI when UFFI comes). The largest
part of the packages would be automatically flagged as "legacy" so the
tagging work would not be too large. (Maybe to bootstrap the tagging system,
all packages published after Pharo 7 release would be flagged as
"maintained" and all others as "legacy".) With this system, ZeroMQ would
have been flagged as "legacy" since Pharo 5 and I would have expected
failure.
So I am not really talking about something to change in the language but
rather in the development process of the language. If it is possible to set
up a simple reporting system, the tagging could be done fast by all users.
(For example, if one loads a package in a given Pharo version, one can click
on an entry in the WorldMenu which runs a form to report to a given server
the successful load or the error and flag the package accordingly.)
Another idea would be to formalize improvements with a Pharo version of PEPs
(Python 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Guillermo Polito]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 1:09 PM, Denis Kudriashov 
wrote:

>
> Sorry, but we will not accept old pragma format (as I said, is invalid…
>> and ugly ;) ).
>
>
> But we will be able load old compiler (when it will be removed from
> standard image) to support such old code
>

But then you should compile such code with the old compiler, not make opal
compatible, no?


>
> 2017-08-17 11:48 GMT+02:00 Esteban Lorenzano :
>
>> hi,
>>
>> Old way to do FFI calls is no longer supported on Pharo, but this
>> deprecation is very old (since Pharo 2). Now, in Pharo 4 we replaced the
>> compiler (for OpalCompiler) and we no longer supported “pragma-like” calls,
>> in part because they are “invalid” pragma calls (they do not agrees with
>> pragma syntax) and in part because the way to go in pharo is using UFFI
>> (before UFFI it was NB which was largely compatible).
>>
>> I don’t know why ZeroMQ bindings are made using old format, but the way
>> to advance them is to
>>
>> > On 16 Aug 2017, at 23:31, bdurin  wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The
>> RBParser
>> > fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks
>> down
>> > the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand
>> all
>> > use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and
>> > some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug.
>> Overall
>> > this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.
>> >
>> > In order to reproduce this:
>> > - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
>> > - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
>> > - add the following repository
>> > MCSmalltalkhubRepository
>> >   owner: 'panuw'
>> >   project: 'zeromq'
>> >   user: ''
>> >   password: ''
>> > - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure
>> if
>> > the latter is needed)
>> > - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to:
>> of the
>> > ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error
>> > (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
>> > "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
>> > apiZmqBind: s
>> > ocket to: endpoint > > - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red
>> box:
>> > then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you
>> are
>> > obstinate and lucky you will succeed in crashing the image.
>> > - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground
>> > RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint
>> >   cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) module:''zmq''>
>> >   ^self externalCallFailed'.
>> > and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root
>> cause is
>> > that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined
>> by
>> > its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is
>> not
>> > a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and
>> setting
>> > the corresponding instance variables.)
>> >
>> > 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
>> > versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for
>> zmq. It
>> > dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years
>> and a
>> > half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).
>> > I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed
>> because
>> > of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI
>> mechanisms, I
>> > quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in
>> pragma
>> > are not supported anymore.
>> > I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
>> > described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
>> > declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already
>> > switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I
>> did not
>> > try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).
>> > Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version
>> is?
>> > It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features
>> used
>> > by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
>> > mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely
>> to
>> > work.
>> > Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago
>> cannot
>> > work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which
>> dates
>> > back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)?
>> > I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my
>> mind,
>> > either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system
>> should
>> > be there to help users.
>>
>> Most of Pharo is largely compatible. Now, we cannot 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Denis Kudriashov]

> Sorry, but we will not accept old pragma format (as I said, is invalid…
> and ugly ;) ).


But we will be able load old compiler (when it will be removed from
standard image) to support such old code

2017-08-17 11:48 GMT+02:00 Esteban Lorenzano :

> hi,
>
> Old way to do FFI calls is no longer supported on Pharo, but this
> deprecation is very old (since Pharo 2). Now, in Pharo 4 we replaced the
> compiler (for OpalCompiler) and we no longer supported “pragma-like” calls,
> in part because they are “invalid” pragma calls (they do not agrees with
> pragma syntax) and in part because the way to go in pharo is using UFFI
> (before UFFI it was NB which was largely compatible).
>
> I don’t know why ZeroMQ bindings are made using old format, but the way to
> advance them is to
>
> > On 16 Aug 2017, at 23:31, bdurin  wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The RBParser
> > fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks
> down
> > the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand
> all
> > use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and
> > some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug.
> Overall
> > this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.
> >
> > In order to reproduce this:
> > - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
> > - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
> > - add the following repository
> > MCSmalltalkhubRepository
> >   owner: 'panuw'
> >   project: 'zeromq'
> >   user: ''
> >   password: ''
> > - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure if
> > the latter is needed)
> > - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: of
> the
> > ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error
> > (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
> > "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
> > apiZmqBind: s
> > ocket to: endpoint  > - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red box:
> > then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you
> are
> > obstinate and lucky you will succeed in crashing the image.
> > - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground
> > RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint
> >   cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) module:''zmq''>
> >   ^self externalCallFailed'.
> > and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root cause
> is
> > that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined
> by
> > its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is
> not
> > a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and setting
> > the corresponding instance variables.)
> >
> > 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
> > versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for zmq.
> It
> > dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years
> and a
> > half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).
> > I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed
> because
> > of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI mechanisms,
> I
> > quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in pragma
> > are not supported anymore.
> > I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
> > described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
> > declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already
> > switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I did
> not
> > try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).
> > Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version
> is?
> > It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features
> used
> > by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
> > mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely
> to
> > work.
> > Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago
> cannot
> > work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which dates
> > back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)?
> > I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my mind,
> > either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system
> should
> > be there to help users.
>
> Most of Pharo is largely compatible. Now, we cannot keep compatibility in
> some areas more than a couple of versions back because the effort of
> advance Pharo *and* keep compatibility is just too much.
> - FFI changed a lot.
> - Morphic changed something.
> - Most of the rest is basically the same (just better).
>
> > 2) Another question about versions: 

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Esteban Lorenzano]

hi,

Old way to do FFI calls is no longer supported on Pharo, but this deprecation 
is very old (since Pharo 2). Now, in Pharo 4 we replaced the compiler (for 
OpalCompiler) and we no longer supported “pragma-like” calls, in part because 
they are “invalid” pragma calls (they do not agrees with pragma syntax) and in 
part because the way to go in pharo is using UFFI (before UFFI it was NB which 
was largely compatible). 

I don’t know why ZeroMQ bindings are made using old format, but the way to 
advance them is to 

> On 16 Aug 2017, at 23:31, bdurin  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The RBParser
> fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks down
> the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand all
> use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and
> some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug. Overall
> this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.
> 
> In order to reproduce this:
> - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
> - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
> - add the following repository
> MCSmalltalkhubRepository
>   owner: 'panuw'
>   project: 'zeromq'
>   user: ''
>   password: ''
> - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure if
> the latter is needed)
> - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: of the
> ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error
> (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
> "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
> apiZmqBind: s
> ocket to: endpoint  - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red box:
> then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you are
> obstinate and lucky you will succeed in crashing the image.
> - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground
> RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint
>   cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) module:''zmq''>
>   ^self externalCallFailed'.
> and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root cause is
> that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined by
> its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is not
> a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and setting
> the corresponding instance variables.)
> 
> 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
> versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for zmq. It
> dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years and a
> half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).
> I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed because
> of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI mechanisms, I
> quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in pragma
> are not supported anymore.
> I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
> described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
> declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already
> switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I did not
> try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).
> Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version is?
> It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features used
> by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
> mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely to
> work.
> Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago cannot
> work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which dates
> back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)?
> I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my mind,
> either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system should
> be there to help users.

Most of Pharo is largely compatible. Now, we cannot keep compatibility in some 
areas more than a couple of versions back because the effort of advance Pharo 
*and* keep compatibility is just too much.
- FFI changed a lot. 
- Morphic changed something.
- Most of the rest is basically the same (just better).

> 2) Another question about versions: Pharo 6 is out since June, Pharo 7 is
> under development. What is the status of Pharo 5? Already history or still
> relevant?
> I am asking because I corrected the problem of FFI declaration in pragma,
> but it seems to me that it is not useful to publish this change as starting
> from Pharo 6 this way to do FFI is not supported. So should I contribute? If
> yes, how to "attach" the patch to Pharo 5?

Pharo5 is history. 
We keep one version back (now Pharo6)

Re: [Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[Denis Kudriashov]

Hi.

I think your problem related to the old FFI syntax. In Pharo UFFI is the
way to do external calls.
To enable old FFI syntax try to switch compiler:

Smalltalk compilerClass: Compiler

I used this trick to port some small library which was based on old FFI. I
made migration manually but maybe there are tools to convert old FFI
methods to new one.

2017-08-16 23:31 GMT+02:00 bdurin :

> Hi,
>
> I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The RBParser
> fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks
> down
> the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand all
> use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and
> some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug. Overall
> this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.
>
> In order to reproduce this:
> - load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
> - launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
> - add the following repository
> MCSmalltalkhubRepository
> owner: 'panuw'
> project: 'zeromq'
> user: ''
> password: ''
> - load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure if
> the latter is needed)
> - open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: of
> the
> ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error
> (receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
> "Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
> apiZmqBind: s
> ocket to: endpoint  - repeat a few times by looking at other methods until you get a red box:
> then you cannot look at source code any more with this browser. If you are
> obstinate and lucky you will succeed in crashing the image.
> - you can pin the problem by running in a Playground
> RBParser parseFaultyMethod: 'apiZmqBind: socket to: endpoint
> cdecl: long ''zmq_bind'' (ZmqApiSocket* char*) module:''zmq''>
> ^self externalCallFailed'.
> and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root cause is
> that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined by
> its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is not
> a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and setting
> the corresponding instance variables.)
>
> 1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
> versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for zmq. It
> dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years and
> a
> half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).
> I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed
> because
> of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI mechanisms, I
> quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in pragma
> are not supported anymore.
> I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
> described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
> declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already
> switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I did
> not
> try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).
> Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version is?
> It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features used
> by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
> mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely to
> work.
> Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago cannot
> work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which dates
> back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)?
> I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my mind,
> either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system
> should
> be there to help users.
>
> 2) Another question about versions: Pharo 6 is out since June, Pharo 7 is
> under development. What is the status of Pharo 5? Already history or still
> relevant?
> I am asking because I corrected the problem of FFI declaration in pragma,
> but it seems to me that it is not useful to publish this change as starting
> from Pharo 6 this way to do FFI is not supported. So should I contribute?
> If
> yes, how to "attach" the patch to Pharo 5?
>
> 3) As explained above, in Pharo 5, looking at the source trigger an error.
> Even if this looks like a rare corner case, I think that the developer
> tools
> should not trigger bugs when looking at source code, even less trigger a
> red
> box in the source code viewer (in the browser, but the problem also occurs
> --less strongly-- when looking at the object in an inspector: there should
> not be "error printing" when it is only a syntax highlight problem). If the
> code is malformed and the parser used to 

[Pharo-users] Parser failure on FFI pragmas declaration in Pharo 5

[bdurin]

Hi,

I stumbled upon what seems to me a strange issue in Pharo 5. The RBParser
fails to correctly parse the legacy FFI pragmas. This completely breaks down
the browser, the inspector and debugger (because as far as I understand all
use RBParser to correctly highlight syntax). I had the image crashed and
some red boxes at some point while insisting to inspect and debug. Overall
this is not a big issue but it raises some more general bells to me.

In order to reproduce this:
- load the official Pharo 5 (curl get.pharo.org/50+vm | bash)
- launch the image (./pharo-ui Pharo.image &)
- add the following repository
MCSmalltalkhubRepository
owner: 'panuw'
project: 'zeromq'
user: ''
password: ''
- load the last versions of ZeroMQ and ConfigurationOfZeroMQ (not sure if
the latter is needed)
- open a Nautilus Browser and look at the class method apiZmqBind:to: of the
ZmqApi class in the ZeroMQ package: you get a MessageNotUnderstood error
(receiver of keywords is nil). You can get past this by clicking on
"Abandon" but the source code is displayed in a corrupted way:
apiZmqBind: s
ocket to: endpoint 
^self externalCallFailed'.
and you'll see that the pragmas is not correctly parsed. (The root cause is
that the legacy adapter RBFFICallPragma does not follow the API defined by
its super class RBPragmaNode (selector, arguments, positions) and so is not
a properly defined node. I corrected the problem by computing and setting
the corresponding instance variables.)

1) As a beginner at Pharo, I find it difficult to deal with the various
versions of Pharo. ZeroMQ is the (only) Smalltalk-Pharo binding for zmq. It
dates back to Feb 2014 so I expected it to work in Pharo as of 3 years and a
half later (Pharo 6 dates back to June 2017).
I naively tried to load the package in a Pharo 6 image and it failed because
of a syntax error. As I had read a lot about the various FFI mechanisms, I
quickly understood that it must be because the FFI declarations in pragma
are not supported anymore.
I then loaded the package in a Pharo 5 image and I got the error that I
described. After finding the error and solving it, I guess that the FFI
declaration in pragma was barely supported in Pharo 5, which has already
switched to UFFI and that it is something dating back to Pharo 4. (I did not
try with Pharo 4 as I do not want to work with versions before 5).
Is there a way to know for a package what the compatible Pharo version is?
It seems that currently I have to look at dates, look at the features used
by the package and look for the history of development (fortunately the
mailing lists are easy to search) to understand which version is likely to
work.
Are not deprecations a bit too fast if a package written 3 years ago cannot
work in the latest Pharo version and trigger bugs in Pharo 5, which dates
back to May 2016 (so only a bit more than 2 years after)?
I find it a bit too fast as compared to mainstream languages. To my mind,
either deprecations should be slower or a version/dependencies system should
be there to help users.

2) Another question about versions: Pharo 6 is out since June, Pharo 7 is
under development. What is the status of Pharo 5? Already history or still
relevant?
I am asking because I corrected the problem of FFI declaration in pragma,
but it seems to me that it is not useful to publish this change as starting
from Pharo 6 this way to do FFI is not supported. So should I contribute? If
yes, how to "attach" the patch to Pharo 5?

3) As explained above, in Pharo 5, looking at the source trigger an error.
Even if this looks like a rare corner case, I think that the developer tools
should not trigger bugs when looking at source code, even less trigger a red
box in the source code viewer (in the browser, but the problem also occurs
--less strongly-- when looking at the object in an inspector: there should
not be "error printing" when it is only a syntax highlight problem). If the
code is malformed and the parser used to highlight syntax fails, there
should be a fallback such as the source code being displayed without any
highlight. It sends a very bad impression to have this kind of bugs when one
simply wants to look at code, not even running it.
I have not dug enough in this area of Pharo, but it seems to me that the
parser that is used to build the AST for code execution / method compilation
should not be the same as the parser used to highligh syntax. (Of course I
am not saying that there should be 2 distincts code base for the 2 parsers,
but they should at least run differently.) The first one must be strict with
errors as a malformed AST cannot be executed. The second one must be
lenient, as a malformed AST does not prevent to print the string of the
source code. Of course, at the end if the code is malformed there will be an
error at execution, but if the source code can be displayed even when it is
malformed, at least I have the opportunity to correct it so that it runs