Cincom Smalltalk Fall 2004 Information

Released - December, 2004

Cincom Smalltalk Fall 2004 is a major release for both VisualWorks and ObjectStudio. The main features we are shipping:

VisualWorks 7.3

• VM
• We will add support for Windows CE (4.x) - on the StrongARM and x86 chipsets
• We will add support for Both Windows Terminal Server and Citrix based systems.
• Preview Support for 64 bit platforms - we intend to have preview (beta) support for the AMD Opteron, the 64 bit Xeon, and the Sparc 64 bit platform. Other platforms (such as the G5 and the HP PA) will follow. This will be a full 64 bit implementation, not simply 32 bit on the 64 bit platforms. Some of what should be there:
• The 64-bit implementation uses full 64-bit adresses for objects, providing the ability to fill the entire available address space with objects
• The immediate floating-point format should provide a very usable range which, although it will be able to overflow to full 64-bit boxed Doubles, should overflow rarely in practice, providing much faster and much more space-affordable floating-point
• Shared Perm space on all 64 bit platforms - which means a much lighter weight server deployment
• The C connect in the 64-bit implementation is a full 64-bit ABI and consequently removes the annoying limitations people have encountered when trying to run the 32-bit system on 64-bit Solaris linking (or rather not being able to link) against 64-bit libraries.
• The two systems are code compatible in that the bytecode is exactly the same between the two systems, so parcels load unchanged and can be freely exchanged between 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
• We will support the ability to develop either in 64-bit or in 32-bit and deploy in the other width
• More details to follow as they become available
• Store
• Store Packages/Bundles into the base. This will mean eliminating categories and parcels as a separate view, and showing a unified package view of the product - whether you use a store repository or not
• Store will support file attachments - so you'll be able to include image files, ssp files (etc) when versioning. This will allow you to manage all project artifacts in Store.
• Base System
• Full Unicode (font) Support for Windows and Mac OS9 (These will remain in preview, but will be improved from the 7.2 release) - Mac OS X is planned, but will not make the current release cycle. This is currently Windows only
• An initial definition of a Smalltalk Runtime Environment. One of the most common issues people have with Smalltalk is the difficulty in packaging - with this release, we will start supporting build up rather than strip down, with a standard deployment system
• .NET Connect
• This component is currently in preview (beta). For the 7.3 release, it will be fully supported. It is possible that .NET Events and WinForms will be supported within this component
• Distribution
• VisualWorks will have a 2 way wizard for dealing with web services - you'll be able to point and click your way to a server and/or client interface very easily, with all the heavy lifting done by the tools.
• SNMP support should stabilize with better ASN.1 parsing
• We will support an Opentalk IIOP at Preview (beta) level. There may well not be a complete implementation (value types in particular). This work will lead to (not in this release) suppport for RMI over IIOP. More details will follow as they become available
• We will have a connection to MQS (IBM Messaging) in preview. This is stable, and in use by customers - but we do not have time for a full review before it is integrated into a supported state. That should happen in 7.3.1 or 7.4
• Internationalization
• We will have better support in the base system for Asian locales. A few Locales will ship with the commercial product, and will be available for NC on request.
• Documentation
• SmalltalkDoc - A new initiative to provide reference documentation for VisualWorks. This may only make it to preview status, depending on how much work gets done on this as opposed to the existing documentation
• GUI
• Pollock will reach Feature Set I in this release. What does that mean? It means that Pollock will be usable, but will not be feature complete and will not be optimized. More Pollock news can be found here

• Full Unicode support (in preview for this release)
• Full support for the XML package that was originally developed for VisualWorks
• Full support for Opentalk, which enables object level communication between VisualWorks and ObjectStudio
• We are investigating some exciting possibilities for ObjectStudio which I am not (yet) prepared to reveal publically. Stay tuned!