squeak (1)

squeak squeak [image filename] [project filename]

squeak is the virtual machine for the Squeak Smalltalk system. It requires three files to operate correctly: an image file containing a `snapshot' of a live Squeak session, a changes file containing the source code for modified methods in the image, and a copy of (or a link to) a shared system sources file containing the source code for methods that have not been modified since the last major version increment.

The image and changes files contain the state of a user's Squeak session, which is persistent between consecutive sessions. Private copies of these files are therefore normally required. The squeak script checks that the local Squeak installation appears sane, and then copies the required files to the current working directory. If squeak encounters no problems, it will finish by running squeak vm to start a Squeak session using the newly copied image and changes files.

squeak accepts an optional image name, and/or an optional project name. If an image name is given on the command line then squeak tries to run that image. Otherwise squeak checks the environment variable SQUEAK_IMAGE and, if it is set, uses its value as the name of the image to run. Otherwise squeak looks for available images in the ~/squeak and /usr/share/squeak directories. Then, squeak shows a dialog with all the available images for the user to choose one of them. If the chosen image is at SQUEAK_IMAGE_DIR (which is by default /usr/share/squeak), it will be copied to ~/squeak. If only one image is available, no dialog will be shown and the script will run that image.

The image argument can be followed by a project name. This is the name of a 'document' that should have been saved from a Squeak image. The project name must have the '.pr' extension.

The project argument can also be providen without an image name. In that case, squeak will look for an image to run the project following the same criteria explained above.

To know all the environment variables that can affect the squeak image launching, take a look at the Environment section of the squeakvm man page.

Appart from those options, these are applied to this script:

SQUEAK_IMAGE_DIR

is the directory, together with ~/squeak where the launcher looks for Squeak images. (The default value is /usr/share/squeak)

SQUEAK_IMAGE

is the name of a image file to be run by the script.

SQUEAK

is the name of an alternative vm (or alternative vm options) to be run by the script. The script launches the vm with these default options: '-mmap 1024M -nomixer'

This manual page documents version [version] of Unix Squeak. It may not be appropriate for any other version.

The image and changes files containing a saved Squeak session are intimately related. They should always be used together, never be separated, and under no circumstances should an image be run with a changes file that has been used with a different image. Failure to adhere to the above could cause the source code for the methods in the image to become garbled and impossible to retrieve.

The Unix Squeak virtual machine fully supports OpenGL in both the X11 and Quartz display drivers. Open Croquet will run just fine with either of these drivers (and many Mac OS X users will even have the choice of which driver to use :).

Because of licensing issues, a Squeak image or Squeak sources package is not available in Debian yet. So the user must download a proper image in order to get this script useful. Available images can be found in these web sites:

The official Squeak home page:

http://squeak.org

The SqueakLand (international educational oriented) world:

http://www.squeakland.org

The spanish educative oriented Squeak page:

http://squeak.educarex.es/

This manual page was written by José L. Redrejo for the Debian project

squeakvm(1).