<U09541@uicvm.uic.edu> (04/30/91)
Can someone summarize about where to get free gnu smalltalk? the major difference between gnu smalltalk and smalltalk V, and the availability of gnu smalltalk benchmarks. Thanks for the info. -Michael Lam U of Ill. at Chicago, eecs dept
sbb@laplace.eng.sun.com (Steve Byrne) (05/05/91)
In article <91119.171423U09541@uicvm.uic.edu> U09541@uicvm.uic.edu writes:
Can someone summarize about where to get free gnu smalltalk? the major
difference between gnu smalltalk and smalltalk V, and the availability
of gnu smalltalk benchmarks. Thanks for the info.
GNU Smalltalk can be retrieved by anonymous FTP from a number of sites around
the country. prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/gnu/smalltalk-1.1.tar.Z is one place;
labrea.stanford.edu is another.
GNU Smalltalk doesn't have the GUI orientation that ST/V has; version 1.1 has a
simple X windows interface. It does have a reasonable amount of integration
with Emacs, so you can do many of the things that you can do with a GUI based
Smalltalk.
I don't know about performance comparisons. Version 1.2 (no, I don't know when
it will be out...work keeps interfering with my free time) has significantly
improved performance, and reduced memory requirements. It also has a more
reasonable X interface, but it's still at the Xlib (really X protocol) level.
It will have call-ins from C (1.1. has callouts), and support for creating and
modifying C structs from within Smalltalk. It will have more support for
system-level things like handling UNIX interrupts. It has conditional
compilation support, and a Lisp-like *features* mechanism. VMS will be
supported as well as the RS/6000. Much more of the I/O system has been brought
into line with the blue book standard. Plus (of course) bug fixes.
Steve