GNU Smalltalk User's Guide

GNU Smalltalk User's Guide

This document describes installing and operating the gnu Smalltalk programming language.

This file documents gnu Smalltalk Version 2.2a. It was last updated on 22 September 2006.

Copyright © 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This document is released under the terms of the gnu Free Documentation License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1.1, or (at your option) any later version.

You should have received a copy of the gnu Free Documentation License along with gnu Smalltalk; see the file COPYING.DOC. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

There are no Cover Texts and no Invariant Sections; this text, along with its equivalent in the printed manual, constitutes the Title Page.

• Overview: What gnu Smalltalk is.
• Using GNU Smalltalk: Running gnu Smalltalk.
• Features: A description of gnu Smalltalk's special features.
• Emacs: gnu Smalltalk and Emacs.
• C and Smalltalk: gnu Smalltalk's C/Smalltalk interoperability features.
• Tutorial: An introduction to Smalltalk and OOP.
• Future: Tasks for gnu Smalltalk's subsequent releases. Volunteers to help out in performing some of these tasks would be greatly appreciated. Please see this node to find out what you can do to help make gnu Smalltalk a truly winning system.

--- The detailed node listing ---

Invocation:

• Invocation: What you can specify on the command line.
• Operation: A step-by-step description of the startup process and a short description of how to interact with gnu Smalltalk.
• Syntax: A description of the input file syntax
• Test suite: How to run the test suite system.
• Legal concerns: Licensing of GNU Smalltalk

Features:

• Memory access: The direct memory accessing classes and methods.
• Namespaces: Avoiding clashes between class names.
• Disk file-IO: Methods for reading and writing disk files.
• Object dumping: Methods that read and write objects in binary format.
• GC: The gnu Smalltalk memory manager.
• Security: Sandboxing and access control.
• Special objects: Methods to assign particular properties to objects.
• Dynamic loading: Picking external libraries and modules at run-time.
• Packages: An easy way to install Smalltalk code into an image.

Packages

• Blox: gnu Smalltalk's user interface building blocks.
• Smalltalk-in-Smalltalk: Beyond Smalltalk's standard reflective abilities.
• Database: Access databases from Smalltalk programs
• Locales: Intenationalize and localize Smalltalk programs
• SUnit
• Network support: An interface to TCP/IP and UDP and support for popular network protocols.
• XML: An XML parser and XSL processor.
• Other packages: Various interesting modules.

Emacs

• Autoloading: Autoloading gnu Smalltalk mode.
• Editing: Autoindent and more for gnu Smalltalk.
• Interactor: Smalltalk interactor mode.

C and Smalltalk:

• External modules: Linking your libraries to the virtual machine
• C callout: Calls from Smalltalk to C.
• C data types: Manipulating C data from Smalltalk.
• Smalltalk types: Manipulating Smalltalk data from C.
• Smalltalk callin: Calls from C to Smalltalk.
• Using Smalltalk: Using the Smalltalk environment as an extension library.
• Incubator: Protecting newly created objects from garbage collections.

Tutorial:

• Getting started: Starting to explore gnu Smalltalk
• Some classes: Using some of the Smalltalk classes
• The hierarchy: The Smalltalk class hierarchy
• Creating classes: Creating a new class of objects
• Creating subclasses: Adding subclasses to another class
• Code blocks (I): Control structures in Smalltalk
• Code blocks (II): Guess what? More control structures
• Debugging: Things go bad in Smalltalk too!
• More subclassing: Coexisting in the class hierarchy
• Streams: Something really powerful
• Behind the scenes: Some nice stuff from the Smalltalk innards
• And now: Some final words
• The syntax: For the most die-hard computer scientists