There's a new version of Pharo, the open-source Smalltalk-inspired language and core library. The new release adds tools to develop applications in small devices for use on the Internet of Things.

Pharo is strongly object-oriented and everything in the Pharo language is an object. The language is dynamically typed; inheritance is simple; memory management is automatic via a garbage collector and its syntax is very simple and small. There's an enthusiastic collection of developers using Pharo, and the developers make regular commits and provide almost daily bug fixes. The language has a number of ways to interface with C, and there are Java and JavaScript libraries.

The new support for IoT projects based on Pharo includes development tools to program, explore and debug remote boards. This feature is based on TelePharo, a toolset for remote development of Pharo images that includes remote versions of playground, browser, debugger, inspector, and process browser.  The IoT tools also include a board modeling library designed to simplify board configuration; and support for Raspberry Pi based on the WiringPi library. Support for Adruino and Beaglebone are both 'coming soon'.

The developers say the new version has better performance and stability in its 64-bit version in Linux and OSX, and is now recommended. There's also a technical preview of the 64-bit version for Windows. The development of Pharo has moved to GitHub, and Pharo is now fully bootstrapped from source. The developers say this will enable the production to specific (micro) images.

Iceberg, the git client for Pharo, has been significantly improved, and is the default VCS. Iceberg is a set of tools that let you handle git repositories directly from a Pharo image. While the current version on supports git, Iceberg is designed to allow other code versioning systems in the future.

The PharoLauncher has been updated with a new version. PharoLauncher is the tool used to manage distributions, and provides access to regular versions, jenkins builds, and older versions.

Another change is to the system browser. Nautilus has been replaced by Calypso, the angular stone of PharoThings. The new version has better support for remote working and more advanced browsing capabilities.

The final main change is that the unified foreign function interface (UnifiedFFI) for interfacing with the outside world is significantly improved to work properly on Windows 64-bit.

More Information

Pharo Website

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