September 2025 - Esug-list

Smalltalk Meetup in Zurich, 31 October 2025

by Peter Ursprung

Hi all, We are organizing the next Smalltalk Meetup in Zurich, Switzerland. It will be on Friday, 31 October 2025, starting at 18:00. We will meet in a meeting room where we will have short Smalltalk talks, then we will go to a nearby restaurant. If you are interested, please register on this website by Friday, 24 October 2025: https://zurich.smalltalk.world <https://zurich.smalltalk.world> Would you like to show something interesting? Please indicate the topic of your desired presentation when registering. Regards, Peter

Sept. 29, 2025

Smalltalker available

by M. Roberts

Hi everyone, I hope you're well. Long time Smalltalker here, currently seeking new opportunities in the field. If you happen to know of any openings for someone with my experience, I'd love to connect. Feel free to pass my info along or drop me a message—I'd really appreciate it! Thanks so much, Mark Roberts https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-roberts-93139b384/

Sept. 29, 2025

Re: [vwnc] JNIPort - is there anyone willing to maintain it?

by Joachim Geidel

Dear Thomas, I definitely do not see the maintenance of JNIPort as enhancing Cincom’s products. You wouldn’t consider writing an open source application running on MS Windows or an open source library for developers who are working on Windows being an „enhancement“ of Windows, thus benefiting MS, or would you? While Cincom was so kind to including it as a contribution in the VisualWorks distribution, it has also been available for Dolphin Smalltalk, Pharo, and VASt in a long time. JNIPort has always been developed completely independently from any of the companies offering Smalltalk IDEs. JNIPort works on VW 8.3, as far as I know, so there’s no work to be done at all for making it work for VWNC users. But even if VWNC is no longer actively supported by Cincom, there may still be Cincom customers who are interested in using JNIPort on one of the more recent VisualWorks versions, and who could have an interest in adapting it to that version. In such a case, a JNIPort user’s contribution in the form of an update would be uploaded directly to the Cincom public repository. I don’t see how this would mean „a lot of time and effort“ for a potential maintainer of JNIPort apart from updating some small parts of the JNIPort documentation. And then, there’s Pharo, which has an active community, and which I suspect to have more active users now than Cincom Smalltalk. Migrating JNIPort to Pharo 14 with some help from the Pharo community shouldn’t be a lot of work. I am simply looking for someone willing to keep the strings together and to prevent that JNIPort accidentally disappears, not someone who invests a lot of time and effort in active development. My ideas about the maintainer’s role: Someone wants to use it, work has to be done to make it work, so they do it themselves and tell the maintainer about it, who then updates the docs. Google switches off Google Sites - the maintainer moves the documentation to another place. And that’s more or less it, unless the maintainer wants to have some fun with enhancing JNIPort for some reason, just as I did when I ported it to VW and Pharo just because I thought that might be interesting and fun (and it was). Joachim > Am 24.09.2025 um 19:31 schrieb Thomas Sattler <tomsattler(a)gmail.com>: > > Joachim, > > Cincom has basically abandoned the VWNC distribution. The "latest" version one can obtain without paying for a license is VW 8.3, which was released in 2017. > > it's hard to imagine people spending a lot of time and effort enhancing a system that old, when the vendor isn't committed to it. I'm sure Cincom is committed to the paying customers, but why should we help with that? > > --Tom > > > > On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 4:36 AM Joachim Geidel <joachim.geidel(a)posteo.de <mailto:joachim.geidel@posteo.de>> wrote: >> Dear fellow Smalltalkers, >> >> JNIPort is an interface from Smalltalk to the Java VM which was originally developed by Chris Uppal for Dolphin Smalltalk. It enables Smalltalk applications to use software written in Java seamlessly, locally and with low overhead, without resorting to network based interfaces like e.g. using microservices. Documentation is at https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://sites.google.com/site/jniport/__;!!DZ3f… . >> >> I have ported JNIPort to VisualWorks and Pharo, and Ben van Dijk, Adriaan van Os and Rolf van der Vleuten have ported it to VASt (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://vastgoodies.com/projects/JNIPort__;!!DZ… ). >> >> The last time I really worked on JNIPort was in 2014, if I remember correctly. Now that I am retired and haven’t written a single line of Smalltalk code in five years, I am wondering if there is anybody willing to take over. >> >> I haven’t had any enquiries about JNIPort since 2020, so the task would be easy: >> - Take over ownership of the documentation site. >> - Possibly move the source code for the Pharo version to Gitlab (it is still in the ancient SmalltalkHub repository). >> - Optionally integrate any changes from JNIPort users, e.g. when they adapt it to more recent versions of VisualWorks or Pharo. There hasn't been any community input since 2017 (or was it 2019?). >> >> If nobody takes over, then JNIPort will be one of the many abandoned open source projects and disappear sooner or later when SmalltalkHub, the Cincom Public Repository and the documentation site are switched off. >> >> On the other hand, I do not know if there is actually anybody using JNIPort. If it has no users, there is no harm in its disappearance, and maintaining it would be a waste of time. >> >> Cheers >> Joachim Geidel

Sept. 25, 2025

JNIPort - is there anyone willing to maintain it?

by Joachim Geidel

Dear fellow Smalltalkers, JNIPort is an interface from Smalltalk to the Java VM which was originally developed by Chris Uppal for Dolphin Smalltalk. It enables Smalltalk applications to use software written in Java seamlessly, locally and with low overhead, without resorting to network based interfaces like e.g. using microservices. Documentation is at https://sites.google.com/site/jniport/. I have ported JNIPort to VisualWorks and Pharo, and Ben van Dijk, Adriaan van Os and Rolf van der Vleuten have ported it to VASt (https://vastgoodies.com/projects/JNIPort) The last time I really worked on JNIPort was in 2014, if I remember correctly. Now that I am retired and haven’t written a single line of Smalltalk code in five years, I am wondering if there is anybody willing to take over. I haven’t had any enquiries about JNIPort since 2020, so the task would be easy: - Take over ownership of the documentation site. - Possibly move the source code for the Pharo version to Gitlab (it is still in the ancient SmalltalkHub repository). - Optionally integrate any changes from JNIPort users, e.g. when they adapt it to more recent versions of VisualWorks or Pharo. There hasn't been any community input since 2017 (or was it 2019?). If nobody takes over, then JNIPort will be one of the many abandoned open source projects and disappear sooner or later when SmalltalkHub, the Cincom Public Repository and the documentation site are switched off. On the other hand, I do not know if there is actually anybody using JNIPort. If it has no users, there is no harm in its disappearance, and maintaining it would be a waste of time. Cheers Joachim Geidel

Sept. 24, 2025

UKSTUG Meeting: Esteban Lorenzano - Pharo 13 - 24 September 2025

by UK Smalltalk

Earlier this year, the Pharo development team announced the availability of Pharo 13 ( https://pharo.org/news/2025-05-21-pharo13-released.html ). For our September 2025 meeting, Pharo's release manager Esteban Lorenzano will give us a tour of the new version - what's changed, and what remains the same. Esteban Lorenzano ( https://github.com/estebanlm ) studied Computer Sciences at Universidad de Buenos Aires, and worked since 1994 in several object-oriented and low-level technologies, in different software companies, serving in various positions from programmer to senior architect. In 2007 he co-founded Smallworks to offer Pharo-based agile development projects. Since 2012 he dedicated full time to developing the Pharo code and community. He works with the INRIA-EVREF team in Lille, France, as core developer for Pharo, being responsible with the coordination of new releases and the implementation and maintenance of several Pharo libraries. This will be an online meeting. If you'd like to join us, please sign up in advance on the meeting's Meetup page ( https://www.meetup.com/ukstug/events/310635970/) to receive the meeting details.

Sept. 23, 2025

Mailinglist esug: Server move is done

by Marcus Denker

Hello, We have moved the ESUG mailinglist to the new server. - all subscribers have been moved over - but not any special config options that you might have configured. If you want to configure your subscription (or unsubcribe), you have to create an account. (this makes sense to do right away, even if you do not need it now) Please sign up at http://lists.esug.org/accounts/signup using the email adress with which you are subscribed to the list. If you have any problems / suggestions, do not hesitate to send a mail to me. Marcus

Sept. 16, 2025

Smalltalk journey - next opportunities ?

by Cyrille Delaunay

Hello dear community ! I started my Smalltalk journey 16 years ago and since then I have been delighted to keep it going all along my career path. I have been excited to make it real and to meet great people on the road. I will be seeking new challenges. If you think this background can be of interest for your project or your team, feel free to reach out :) Cyrille Delaunay linkedin.com/in/cyrille-delaunay-307a4a57

Sept. 16, 2025