[Help-smalltalk] Re: Smalltalk mailing list & compilation

[Paolo Bonzini]

> Thanks, you may save some people some time :)
I think not many people are running 2.95.x at this time.
> Now, here goes the newbie questions, please bear with me: I am new to 
> Smalltalk and have looked at the manual page at 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/gst-manual/gst.html and I can't 
> make the examples work. I've run the test suite and all test pass but 
> when I try to run Blox as stated in 3.7.1 (gst -qK blox/Run.st) these 
> files don't exist, I think it's equivalent to run
>
> gst -qK browser/Run.st 
Yes, that should be fixed.  The online manual has not been updated for a 
long time.  You can do "make pdf" after installing and get nice manuals 
in pdf format (or also "make html").
> /usr/local/share/smalltalk/browser/Run.st:44: invalid scope resolution
>
> I have a directory named blox-tk and I'm sure I'm missing something 
> but how can I correct this? How does Smalltalk look for packages, how 
> does it know 'Browser' corresponds to browser-tk?
The browser is cross platform, it works equally for Tk and Gtk (but the 
latter is experimental).  But you probably don't have the Tcl/Tk 
development packages installed.  Look for tclConfig.sh in your disk, it 
is probably not there.
> Another problem is I seem unable to type examples at the st> prompt. 
> If I type
>
> x := Array new: 20 !
>
> I get
>
> stdin:1: assignment to undeclared variable x
>
> but I thought you don't have to declare anything in Smalltalk!?
No, you do have to declare temporary variables.

| x |
x := Array new: 20!

Note also that, after you end the "interaction" with the exclamation 
mark, the "x" variable ceases to exist.

This is not true with the graphical browser, which has temporary 
variable like these, but also permanent, workspace-visible variables.
> Thanks for your help and sorry for the long message but I'm totally 
> new to this. 
No problem, if there are any suggestions you can make I (and the few 
other contributors) are all ears.

Paolo