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grants Master Internship / offres de stage Master

by Pierre Bommel

Hello, Bonjour, Hola, We are looking for a Master internship to work on Cormas, a simulation platform (https://github.com/cormas/cormas , or see here for our presentation at ESUG: https://hackmd.iscpif.fr/GGwvzBFqRASE5zCzlRwArQ?view) Nous recherchons un stagiaire de Master pour travailler sur Cormas, une plateforme de simulation (https://github.com/cormas/cormas , cf. notre présentation à ESUG: https://hackmd.iscpif.fr/GGwvzBFqRASE5zCzlRwArQ?view) Estamos buscando un estudiante de Maestría para trabajar en Cormas. Voici l'annonce en français (in English below) : https://www.hdigitag.fr/fr/les-offres-de-stage-digitag/ *Simulation participative de la gestion des ressources renouvelables dans des environnements hybrides* *Mots-clé*: Simulation participative, Computer Vision , Smalltalk, Cormas * *Durée souhaitée du stage (nombre de mois):*8 * *Date de début du stage*: 1/02/2021 * *Unité de recherche*: Green, Cirad * *Contact*: Bommel Pierre : bommel(a)cirad.fr * *#DigitAg*: Axe 2 : Innovations en agriculture numérique, Axe 6 : Modélisation et simulation (systèmes de production agricole) / Challenge 1 : Le challenge agroécologique, Challenge 2 : Le phénotypage rapide, Challenge 6 : La gestion des territoires agricoles, Challenge 7 : Intégration de l’agriculture dans les chaînes de valeur, Challenge 8 : Développement agricole au Sud L’ambition d’éliminer les interfaces physiques qui permettent l’interaction avec les machines est une idée ancienne dans le monde de l’informatique qui a pris plusieurs directions. La plus emblématique pour le grand public a émergé en 2005 sous le nom de “projet Natal” repris et démocratisé par Microsoft dans sa dernière version baptisée “Azure Kinect” (2019). Ce capteur détecte les mouvements et les objets dans le champ de vision de l’utilisateur pour produire des résultats dans un logiciel. Il a été abondamment détourné et enrichi depuis ses débuts grand public pour permettre de nouvelles manières d’interagir avec les machines. Par ailleurs, le groupe de chercheurs à l’origine de la création d’une plateforme de modélisation à base d’agents baptisée Cormas [1] fait actuellement face à des besoins accrus d’interactivités dans les simulations participatives. Basée sur le langage Smalltalk, Cormas est développée depuis la fin des années 1990 par une équipe fortement interdisciplinaire. Au-delà des usages traditionnels de la modélisation agents, Cormas se démarque des autres plateformes par des processus originaux de modélisation : l’approche ComMod (pour Companion Modeling : modélisation d’accompagnement [2]), qui vise à proposer des outils permettant de participer activement à la conception d’un modèle, mais aussi de s’immerger dans des situations de jeux interactifs. Le jeu (de plateau ou informatisé) sert alors de support pour échanger sur une situation vécue. En 2012, pour la première fois, l’équipe utilisait un video-projecteur à ultra-courte focale pour projeter sur une table un plateau de jeu. Ce simple changement a induit des comportements radicalement différents leur permettant une interaction beaucoup plus naturelle avec les simulations informatisées. En outre, la configuration spatiale des acteurs favorise les interactions sociales. Mais jusqu’à aujourd’hui, la saisie manuelle par l’animateur des décisions prises par les joueurs reste nécessaire ce qui réduit la fluidité et la spontanéité des interactions. L’équipe en charge du développement de Cormas souhaite investiguer les possibilités offertes par les nouvelles applications liées à la détection d’objets et de mouvements en portant un prototype de simulation participative dans le champ de la simulation hybride entre modèle informatique et jeu physique. Ce travail de preuve de concept appliqué au modèle ReHab (modèle école de ComMod) nécessitera de mettre au point des méthodes de détection fiables d’objets physiques pour être intégrées dans le calcul du nouvel état simulé. Aujourd’hui, Cormas s’appuie sur Pharo (Smalltalk open-source). Cette solution est développée par l’INRIA et par un consortium de chercheurs et d’industriels. La communauté dynamique propose un ensemble de packages permettant de mutualiser le développement de fonctionnalités qui pourraient être mobilisées pour proposer un prototype pour des simulation participative et la détection d’objets *English* : https://www.hdigitag.fr/en/digitag-master2-internship-offers/ *Participatory simulation of renewable resource management in hybrid environments* * *Keywords*: Participatory simulation, Computer Vision , Smalltalk, Cormas * *Duration*: 8 months * *Desired start date*: 1/02/2021 * *Research Unit*: Green, Cirad * *Contact*: Bommel Pierre – bommel(a)cirad.fr * *#DigitAg*: Axe 2,Axe 6 – Challenge 1,Challenge 2 ,Challenge 6 ,Challenge 7, Challenge 8 The ambition to remove the physical interfaces that allow interactions with computers is an old idea in the IT world that took several directions. The most emblematic one for the general public emerged in 2005 under the name of “Project Natal” taken up and democratized by Microsoft in its latest version called “Azure Kinect” (2019). This sensor detects movements and objects in the user’s field of vision to produce results in softwares. It has been abundantly diverted and enriched since its beginnings for the general public to allow new ways of interacting with computers. In addition, the group of researchers behind the development of an agent-based modeling platform called Cormas [1] is currently facing increased needs for interactivity in participatory simulations. Based on the Smalltalk language, Cormas has been developed since the late 1990s by a highly interdisciplinary team. Beyond the traditional uses of agent modeling, Cormas differs from other platforms by innovative modeling processes: the ComMod approach (Companion Modeling [2]), which aims to provide tools to actively participate in the design of a model, but also to immerse oneself in interactive game situations. The game (board or computer game) is then used as a support to exchange on a real-life situation. In 2012, for the first time, the team used an ultra-short focal projector to project a game board on a table. This simple change induced radically different behaviors of the actors allowing them to interact more naturally with computer simulations. In addition, the spatial configuration of the actors favors social interactions. But until today, manual input by the facilitator of the decisions taken by the players remains necessary, which reduces the fluidity and spontaneity of interactions. The team in charge of Cormas’ development wishes to investigate the possibilities offered by new opportunities related to the detection of objects and movements by bringing a prototype of participatory simulation in the field of hybrid simulation between computer model and physical game.This proof of concept work applied to the ReHab model (ComMod’s school model) will require the development of reliable detection methods for physical objects to be integrated into the calculation of the new simulated state. Today, Cormas relies on Pharo (an open-source Smalltalk). This solution is implemented by INRIA and a consortium of researchers and industrialists. The dynamic community proposes a set of packages allowing to mutualize the development of functionalities that could be mobilized to propose a prototype for participative simulation and object detection

Feb. 3, 2021

URGENT - Fully funded Research Internship for Smalltalk programmer

by Simon Holland

URGENT – Fully funded five-month research internship available immediately in the School of Computing and Communications at The Open University for programmer. A fully funded place for a five-month Research Intern is immediately available at the School of Computing at the Open University. Prospective research interns could be excellent final year undergraduates, Masters students, or PhD students, or could have recently completed any of these awards. The post is available immediately, but in any case, you must be available to start in February 2021. Due to covid restrictions, the intern will be based remotely, with co-ordination online. The project involves the iterative design, construction and exploration of a highly expressive Direct Combination system (although no previous knowledge of Direct Combination is required). Direct Combination is a family of user interaction techniques, and a user interaction framework. Recent developments in Stateful Traits (Tesone et al., 2020) have provided tools for creating new highly expressive Direct Combination systems. The Project will involve designing, implementing and evaluating a new direct combination engine, and creating support tools as needed. You will be strongly encouraged to contribute as co-author to one or more refereed research publications. This research internship is available to start immediately and will run for five months. You will be able to work remotely for this whole period. Skills Good Smalltalk programming skills are essential, ideally in Pharo. Good written and oral English communication skills are essential. Willingness to consider the end-user’s point of view is important. Various background skills are not essential, but could be helpful, such as: knowledge of, or interest in, software composition research and metaprogramming; good TDD habits; acquaintance with stateful traits; acquaintance with the Data-Context-Interaction paradigm; experience and skills with the Pharo toolset, such as Roassal, the Glamorous Toolkit, and Iceberg. Applications should include a CV with contact details and covering note that summarizes: • evidence of appropriate knowledge, skills and experience, • why you want to undertake this particular internship and why you would be a good candidate, • telephone, email and postal contact details for two referees, at least one of whom must be able to comment on subject discipline specifics. For more information, or for informal enquiries, which are encouraged, contact s.holland or o.howson (insert <at> here) open.ac.uk. Applications should also be sent to this address, and also copied to STEM-CC-Secretaries(a)open.ac.uk. ——————————————————————————————————————— Further particulars Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of a highly expressive Direct Combination Prototype Candidates are not required to know anything about Direct Combination (DC). However, some optional background is provided for candidates who might wish to know about the project’s aim and scope. Direct Combination is variously a principle, a family of user interaction techniques, and a user interaction framework (Holland and Oppenheim, 1999; Holland et al., 2002a). Together, these can give users greatly enhanced flexibility interacting with digital systems and can reduce search when dealing with complex or unfamiliar interfaces (Holland et al., 2005). Direct Combination also has potential to simplify multi-device interaction (Holland et al., 2002), enhance bimanual interaction (Webb, 2017), facilitate interactions spanning virtual and physical boundaries; encourage serendipitous interaction (Holland et al., 2002b), and to enable the incremental development of novel interactions by end-user programming (Holland, 2003). While the potential of Direct Combination has been widely noted (e.g. Beaudouin-Lafon and Mackay, 2000, Rekimoto, 2004, Bartoleo et al, 2006 , Webb, 2017, Agarwal et al, 2019) existing implementations have been constrained by the limitations of available mechanisms for the modelling of separation of concerns in multi-dimensional domain models. However, new mechanisms that facilitate separation of concerns, in particular the revised version of Stateful Traits (Tesone et al., 2020) have created new opportunities for building highly expressive Direct Combination engines. Reenaskaug’s Data-Context-Interaction Paradigm (Reenskaug, 2006; James Coplien and Trygve Reenskaug, 2012) has also contributed relevant insights. As well as prototyping the new DC engine, the project will prototype support tools. To this end, the project will also involve analysing and creating informal domain models for one or two end-user domains, anticipated to be an AR/VR game in Unity (linked via a simple OSC bridge) and possibly an interface to allow end users and music scholars to query, analyse and visualise large quantities of linked music data on the web (via SPARQL). The choice of Smalltalk as preferred development environment reflects the fact that three previous implementations of Direct Combination at the Open University, and the reference implementations of both Stateful Traits and DCI, were all developed in Smalltalk (variously in Squeak, VisualWorks and Pharo). At the same time, the pervasively live-object nature of Smalltalk and its sophisticated IDE, along with the powerful metaprogramming facilities, offer substantial advantages in facilitating rapid prototyping and exploration. References Agarwal, Mallika, Arjun Srinivasan, and John Stasko. (2019) "VisWall: Visual Data Exploration Using Direct Combination on Large Touch Displays." 2019 IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS). IEEE, 2019 Bartolomeo, G., BlefariMelazzi, N., Cortese, G., Friday, A., Prezerakos, G., Walker, R. and Salsano, S., 2006, February. Sms: Simplifying mobile services-for users and service providers. In Advanced Int'l Conference on Telecommunications and Int'l Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services (AICT-ICIW'06) (pp. 209-209). IEEE. Beaudouin-Lafon, M. and Mackay, W.E., 2000, May. Reification, polymorphism and reuse: three principles for designing visual interfaces. In Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces (pp. 102-109). James Coplien and Trygve Reenskaug (2012) The data, context and interaction paradigm. In SPLASH '12: Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference on Systems, programming, and applications: software for humanity. Gedenryd, H. (2002). Beyond Inheritance, Aspects and Roles: a Unified Scheme for Object and Program Composition. TR2002/09, Department of Computing, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK76AA, UK. Holland, S. and Oppenheim, D. (1999) Direct Combination. Proceedings of CHI 1999 pp. 262-269. Holland, S., Morse, D.R., Gedenryd, H. (2002a) Direct Combination: a New User Interaction Principle for Mobile and Ubiquitous HCI. In Paterno, F., (Ed.) (2002) Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices. Mobile HCI 2002. Holland, Simon; Gedenryd, Henrik and Morse, David (2002b). Applying Direct Combination to afford spontaneity in Pervasive Computing. In: Workshop on Supporting Spontaneous Interaction in Ubiquitous Computing Settings, 29 Sep - 1 Oct 2002, Gothenburg, Sweden. Reenskaug, T. (2006) DCI Documentation http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/themes/babyide/baby-documents.html (Accessed 19 Dec 2020) Holland, Simon (2005). A first empirical study of direct combination in a ubiquitous environment. In: Fincher, Sally; Markpoulos, Panos; Moore, David and Ruddle, Roy eds. People and computers XVIII - Design for life: proceedings of HCI 2004. London, UK: Springer, pp. 229–247. Holland, Simon (2003). Ambient Combination: Applying Direct Combination to Afford Spontaneity in Pervasive Computing . http://mcl.open.ac.uk/DC/uploads/Ambient%20Combination%20Long.pdf (accessed 10 Jan 2021) Rekimoto, J. (2004). SyncTap: synchronous user operation for spontaneous network connection. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(2), 126-134. Pablo Tesone, Stéphane Ducasse, Guillermo Polito, Luc Fabresse, Noury Bouraqadi (2020) A new modular implementation for stateful traits, Science of Computer Programming, Volume 195, 102470, ISSN 0167-6423, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2020.102470. Webb, A.M., 2017. Phrasing Bimanual Interaction for Visual Design (Doctoral dissertation).

Jan. 24, 2021

Two year position at RMOD on Pharo and Machine Learning

by Stéphane Ducasse

Hello we have a new position at RMOD France to work on machine learning algorithms for Pharo. Please distribute this announce and do not hesitate to contact me for more information. S. -------------------------------------------- Stéphane Ducasse http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr / http://www.pharo.org 03 59 35 87 52 Assistant: Aurore Dalle FAX 03 59 57 78 50 TEL 03 59 35 86 16 S. Ducasse - Inria 40, avenue Halley, Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne, Bât.A, Park Plaza Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650 France

Jan. 21, 2021

UK Smalltalk User Group meeting - Wednesday, January 27th

by Giovanni Corriga

The next meeting of the UK Smalltalk User Group will be on Wednesday, January 27th. For this presentation, guest speaker Michael Engel will bring us back to basics with a bare-metal Smalltalk-80 system for the Raspberry Pi. In 2020, the Xerox PARC research laboratory celebrated its 50th anniversary. One of the most important developments coming out of PARC is the Smalltalk system, which integrates a programming language, operating system and graphical user interface. Today, most of the Smalltalk systems run in hosted mode on a conventional operating system. This contradicts Dan Ingalls' idea that "an operating system is a collection of things that don't fit inside a language; there shouldn't be one". Accordingly, original Smalltalk systems, e.g. for the Alto workstation, ran on the bare metal of the computer. In this talk, we will discuss an approach to create a bare-metal Smalltalk-80 implementation for the Raspberry Pi ( https://www.raspberrypi.org/ ), a popular family of ARM-based systems. Interesting aspects that will be investigated are the overhead involved in bringing the system to life and debugging it, adapting the system to different Raspberry Pi models, and constraints due to properties of the hardware and the Smalltalk-80 VM. Michael Engel ( https://multicores.org/ ) is associate professor for compiler design at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim/Norway. His research interests lie on the intersection of compilers, operating systems and modern hardware. In previous positions, Michael worked at different German Universities as well as Oracle Labs Cambridge and Leeds Beckett University. He also was founder and CTO of kernel concepts, the first German company working with embedded Linux systems in 1999. Given the current COVID-19 restrictions, this will be an online meeting from home. If you'd like to join us, please sign up in advance on the meeting's Meetup page ( https://www.meetup.com/UKSTUG/events/cbklbrycccbkc/ ) to receive the meeting details. Don’t forget to bring your laptop and drinks!

Jan. 15, 2021

Beta Testing ARM64 Linux & Windows

by Stéphane Ducasse

Hi Happy new year. This announce from the pharo consortium can interest some of you. S. > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "tesonep(a)gmail.com" <tesonep(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [Pharo-users] Beta Testing ARM64 Linux & Windows > Date: 11 January 2021 at 18:21:00 CET > To: Pharo-dev <pharo-dev(a)lists.pharo.org>, Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > Reply-To: Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users(a)lists.pharo.org> > > In the last months, we have been working on the implementation of a MIT-licensed ARMv8 Just-In-Time compiler for Pharo VM. > We would like to announce that a beta first version of our JIT backend is available for beta-testing for ARM Linux and Windows machines. > > We are very happy with the advance in this subject, as we have not only implemented a new backend but we have added more than 2500 tests of the JIT, the primitives, code generation, plugins, and the VM in general. Also, we are generating a lot of documentation and improving the process to really democratize the development of the VM. > > After all the text there are details on how to obtain the versions for testing it. > > The following sections give more details of the current status, and the following steps including Apple Silicon, Windows, and Linux ARM64. > > Current Status > > Our objective is to have a running JIT for the new aarch64 architecture (ARM 64bits). This task includes not only a new backend for the JIT compiler but also adding support for external libraries, dependencies, and the build process. This means having a working VM with comparable features as the one existing in Intel X64. We are targeting all the major operating systems running on this platform (Linux, OSX, Windows). Each of them presents different restrictions and conditions. > > After expending some time this is the current status: > > - We implemented a full backend for the JIT compiler targeting aarch64. > - All the image side was adapted to run on it, tested on Ubuntu ARM 64 bits. > - We added support for: Iceberg (Libgit) / Athens (Cairo) / SDL / GTK > - We implemented a LibFFI based FFI backend as the default one for Pharo 9 in aarch64 (next to come in all platforms). This opens the door to easily port the features to other platforms and OSes. This new implementation does not have an impact on performance as it has comparable results with the old implementation. Much more, this implementation opens also the door to have runners in different threads than the VM thread (non-blocking FFI). > > Status By Platform > > Linux > > We have a working version of the VM. It is using the same code-base and build process for both architectures (Intel X64 / ARM aarch64). A version can be compiled and executed in all the platforms. Also, we have integrated the build using Open Build Services (OBS) to generate packages for all the mainstream distributions. > Currently, the version for Debian-like systems (Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry pi OS, etc) is available and ready to beta test; the details for installing them are in the end of the mail. Versions for ARCH-based and RPM-based systems are in the working (If you want to get them or to test them please contact us, so we can pass on the detail of how to get them). > > Windows > > We have extended the build process to fully support Microsoft Visual Studio compilers and more flexibility to select the targets, also we are building it to run in Windows ARM. To correctly run the VM in Windows it is needed to build all dependencies for aarch64. > In this path, we have a working Intel x64 version with Cygwin and MSVC, and a MSVC version for aarch64 (ARM64). > The ARM64 version is available to be beta-testing on machines with this architecture. > The Details are at the end of the mail. > > OSX > > Our third target is to have a working version for the newest Apple silicon. We are acquiring the corresponding hardware to test and to address the differences in the API exposed to JIT applications. As it is the case of the Windows VM, there is no need to change the machine code generation backend, as it is the same that has been implemented for Linux; but to compile external libraries and particularities of the new OS version. > > Thanks for your support. In the meantime, we will continue giving you news about the current state and where are we going. > > Beta Testing - Linux > > For Debian like distributions, the instructions are the following. > > Installation > > 1) Add a new APT source, usually modifying a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, for example, we can add the pharo.list file with the following content. Also, we need to register the key of the repository. These steps should be done only once. We are giving a little script for modifying the configuration. It is only needed to execute line by line. > > For Raspbian: > > echo "deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/… <https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/…> ./" >> pharo.list > > sudo cp pharo.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pharo.list > > wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/… <https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/…> > > sudo apt-key add Release.key > > > For Ubuntu: > > echo "deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/… <https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/…> ./" >> pharo.list > > sudo cp pharo.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pharo.list > > wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/… <https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/pharo:/latest/…> > > sudo apt-key add Release.key > > 2) Update the repository to take the current versions > > sudo apt update > > 3) Install Pharo9 VM > > sudo apt install pharo9 libgit2 > > > 4) In case of using the interactive version (with UI) check if the packages libsdl2-2.0-0 and libcairo2 are installed (Usually they are installed, but depends what it is installed in the system). These are not needed for the headless execution or if it is not used by the image. > > > Getting the images: > > The images can be downloaded using zero-conf, the latest image is ready to be used. It can be done with: > > wget -O - get.pharo.org/64/90 <http://get.pharo.org/64/90> | bash > > > Running Pharo > > pharo Pharo.image eval 42 factorial > > Or interactive > > pharo Pharo.image --interactive > > Windows Testing > > A version of the VM is ready to be tested in Windows ARM64. A zip containing the VM is available in: > > https://files.pharo.org/vm/pharo-spur64/Windows-ARM64/PharoVM-9.0.0-4df0e56… <https://files.pharo.org/vm/pharo-spur64/Windows-ARM64/PharoVM-9.0.0-4df0e56…> > > As in Linux, the latest image is compatible with this version of the VM. > > Error reporting > > In case of encountering errors please report them attaching: > > - crash.dmp file and PharoDebug.log > - Version of the image using (in case of any community project loaded, the names of those) > > - Complete machine version (the result of executing uname -a) > - Complete information about the Linux distribution > > - Steps for reproducing the error (if needed) > > Thanks for the effort!! > > -- > Pablo Tesone. > tesonep(a)gmail.com <mailto:tesonep@gmail.com> -------------------------------------------- Stéphane Ducasse http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr / http://www.pharo.org 03 59 35 87 52 Assistant: Aurore Dalle FAX 03 59 57 78 50 TEL 03 59 35 86 16 S. Ducasse - Inria 40, avenue Halley, Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne, Bât.A, Park Plaza Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650 France

Jan. 15, 2021

[ANN] SqueakJS 1.0

by Vanessa Freudenberg

Hi All, yesterday I released version 1.0 of SqueakJS, exactly 7 years after my first public announcement on December 20, 2013. https://squeak.js.org/ Arguably I should have done this back in 2016 when it could run Spur images. What got it over the last hump was Fabio's interpreter for Sista bytecodes and Erik's refactoring for Node.js. SqueakJS is now the most compatible Squeak VM: it can run pre-release images from 1996 as well as the latest Squeak 6.0 trunk image. For production, you should still use non-Sista images, because no JIT has been implemented yet. A big Thank You to all the contributors over the years, and to Dan Ingalls for the inspiration, and funding the initial development. There are still many things to work on: - a simple JIT for Sista bytecode to bring its speed at least up to par with its pre-Sista speed - a "real" JIT with context mapping (keeping temps in JS vars rather than on the stack) and send optimizations (mapping sends to JS function invocations) - 64 bit support for pre-Spur images - big-endian support for 64 bit images Help is very welcome at https://github.com/codefrau/SqueakJS Happy Holidays to Everyone! Vanessa

Dec. 22, 2020

Smalltalk Zoo: 48 Years of Smalltalk History at CHM

by Vanessa Freudenberg

> > In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the release of Smalltalk-80, > the Computer History Museum is proud to announce a collaboration with Dan > Ingalls to preserve and host the “Smalltalk Zoo.” Dan has been working on this for a good while now. I helped with the SqueakJS part. Today the Computer History Museum announced it: https://computerhistory.org/blog/introducing-the-smalltalk-zoo-48-years-of-… Not everything is working perfectly yet. If you want to help out, I can put you in touch with Dan. Cheers! Vanessa

Dec. 18, 2020

MoreVMs 2021 : Workshop on Modern Language Runtimes, Ecosystems, and VMs

by Fabio Niephaus

============================================================================ Call for Extended Abstracts and Talks: MoreVMs’21 5th International Workshop on Modern Language Runtimes, Ecosystems, and VMs Co-located with ‹Programming›’21 March 22nd to 26th, 2021, Online, United Kingdom https://2021.programming-conference.org/home/MoreVMs-2021 ============================================================================ Following four previous successful editions, the MoreVMs’21 workshop aims to bring together industrial and academic programmers to discuss the design, implementation, and usage of modern languages and runtimes. This includes aspects such as reuse of language runtimes, modular implementation, language design, and compilation strategies. By bringing together both researchers and practitioners, the workshop aims to enable a diverse discussion on how languages and runtimes are currently being utilized, and where they need to improve further. In addition to conventional workshop-style submissions, MoreVMs also accepts (and encourages) submissions that present early-stage work and emerging ideas. Relevant topics include, but are definitely not limited to, the following: - Extensible VM design (compiler- or interpreter-based VMs) - Reusable components (e.g. interpreters, garbage collectors, ...) - Static and dynamic compilation techniques - Techniques for targeting high-level languages such as JavaScript - Interoperability between languages - Tooling support (e.g. debugging, profiling, etc.) - Programming language development environments - Case studies of existing language implementation approaches - Language implementation challenges and trade-offs - Surveys and usage reports to understand usage in the wild - Ideas for more predictable performance - Ideas for how VMs could take advantage of new hardware features - Ideas for how we should build languages in the future Workshop Format and Submissions ------------------------------- We welcome presentation proposals in the form of extended abstracts (2 to 4 pages long) and talk proposals (title and 400 words abstract) discussing new techniques, insights, experiences, works-in-progress, as well as future visions, from either an academic or industrial perspective. The extended abstracts and talk proposals, and if the speakers wish, their slides, will be published on the workshop's website. Alternatively, extended abstracts can be published as part of the companion of ‹Programming›’21 in the ACM DL. Publication in the ACM DL is conditional on the acceptance by the program committee. Please note that MoreVMs’21 is organized as an academic workshop, and as such, speakers will be required to register for the workshop. Author Instructions ------------------- Submissions should use the ACM `acmart` format: https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template If you are using LaTeX, submissions should use the 'acmart' document class with the 'sigconf' option, and with a font size of 9 point. Please use the Libertine/Biolinum font family. Please include page numbers in your submission using the LaTeX command `\settopmatter{printfolios=true}`. All submissions should be in PDF format. Please also ensure that your submission is legible when printed on a black and white printer. In particular, please check that colors remain distinct and font sizes are legible. Submission Site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=morevms21 Important Dates --------------- Extended abstract and talk submissions: 2021-01-13 Author notification: 2021-02-15 Camera Ready: 2021-02-26 Workshop: TBA (between 2021-03-22 and 2021-03-26) All deadlines are Anywhere on Earth (AoE), i.e. GMT/UTC-12:00 hour. Program Committee ----------------- Maya Armyanova, Google, Germany Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert, Université de Montréal, Canada Lukas Diekmann, King's College London, United Kingdom Charlie Gracie, Microsoft, Canada Daco Harkes, Google, Denmark Christian Humer, Oracle Labs, Switzerland Sophie Kaleba, University of Kent, United Kingdom Mikel Luján, University of Manchester, United Kingdom Ana Milanova, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States Tobias Pape, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany Tomoharu Ugawa, University of Tokyo, Japan Organizers ---------- Fabio Niephaus, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany David Leopoldseder, Oracle Labs, Austria

Dec. 16, 2020

Call for Beta-testers Pharo ARM64 JIT

by Stéphane Ducasse

Dear happy Pharoers and others, Over the last months we have been working on the implementation of a MIT-licensed ARMv8 Just-In-Time compiler for Pharo VM. We are very happy with the advance on this subject, as we have not only implemented a new backend but we have added more than 2500 tests to the JIT, the primitives, code generation, plugins and the VM in general. In the process we fixed many problems. It shows that following the roadmap that was decided during General assembly of PharoDays, we have been investing in the Pharo VM and that our efforts are greatly paying off. Also, we are generating a lot of documentation and improving the process to really democratize the development of the VM. So Pharo is a better shape than ever on such matter and this opens a lot of possibility for the future. ## Call for Beta-Testers We would like to announce that a first version of our JIT backend is available for beta-testing for ARM Linux machines using Ubuntu. We are now entering into a beta testing stage of the VM and the image in Ubuntu ARM 64. We would like to invite you to our beta testing phase for the VM. If you're interested in participating, please contact pablo.tesone(a)inria.fr. The following sections give more details of the current status, and the following steps including Apple Silicon, Windows ARM64 and Linux Open Build System support. ## Current Status Our objective is to have a running JIT for the new aarch64 architecture (ARM 64bits). This task includes not only a new backend for the JIT compiler but also adding support for external libraries, dependencies and the build process. This means having a working VM with comparable features as the one existing in Intel X64. We are targeting all the major operating systems running in this platform (Linux, OSX, Windows). Each of them present different restrictions and conditions. This is the current status: - We implemented a full backend for the JIT compiler targeting aarch64. - All the image side was adapted to run on it, tested on Ubuntu ARM 64 bits. - We added support for: Iceberg (Libgit) / Athens (Cairo) / SDL / GTK - We implemented a LibFFI-based FFI backend as the default one for Pharo 9 in aarch64 (next to come in all platforms). This opens the door to ease port the features to other platforms and OSes. ## Following Steps and Open Betas: Linux Open Build System (OBS), Windows ARM64 and Apple Silicon Linux Systems: In the following days, we will also support Raspbian (Debian) and Manjaro on ARM64. For doing so, we are pushing the last details in having a single Linux build system through OBS. So, if you want to start doing beta-testing of these versions please contact us. A public beta will be open in around two weeks. Windows Systems: We have extended the build process to fully support Microsoft Visual Studio compilers and more flexibility to select the targets, also we are building it to run in Windows ARM. To correctly run the VM in Windows it is needed to build all dependencies for aarch64. In the following weeks, we expect to have a working Non-JIT version and a JIT version. The remaining points to have a JIT version are related with the build process as the API of the operating system has not changed from X64 to aarch64. OSX Systems: Our third target is to have a working version for the newest Apple silicon. We are acquiring the corresponding hardware to test and to address the differences in the API exposed to JIT applications. As it is the case of the Windows VM, there is not need to change the machine code generation backend; but to compile external libraries, and particularities of the new OS version. Thanks for your support, and again, if you like to start beta testing the VM please contact us. In the meantime, we will continue giving you news about the current state and where are we going. The consortium would like to particularly thank Schmidt Buro and Lifeware for their contracts. Regards, Pablo in behalf of the Pharo Consortium Engineers -------------------------------------------- Stéphane Ducasse http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr / http://www.pharo.org 03 59 35 87 52 Assistant: Aurore Dalle FAX 03 59 57 78 50 TEL 03 59 35 86 16 S. Ducasse - Inria 40, avenue Halley, Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne, Bât.A, Park Plaza Villeneuve d'Ascq 59650 France

Dec. 12, 2020

UK Smalltalk User Group Meeting - Wednesday, December 30th

by Giovanni Corriga

The UK Smalltalk User Group will have an extra meeting this year on Wednesday, December 30th. feenk's Tudor Girba will present the latest in moldable development with Glamorous Toolkit. Moldable development is an approach to programming through which we make the inside of software systems explainable. Glamorous Toolkit makes it practical. And beautiful. Given the current COVID-19 restrictions, this will be an online meeting from home. If you'd like to join us, please sign up in advance on the meeting's Meetup page ( https://www.meetup.com/UKSTUG/events/275119813/ ) to receive the meeting details. Don’t forget to bring your laptop and drinks!

Dec. 11, 2020