Re: [Help-smalltalk] Re: amd 64 and gnu smalltalk

[Stephen]

> > Though, I don't think that converting all of your Ruby administration 
> > scripts
> > into GST is a good idea. GST is not as stable as Ruby or does not have 
> > extra
> > libraries as much as Ruby has etc... Maybe you should first try some
> > experimental administration scripts and convert the rest if you are 
> > satisfied.
>
> I tested them all on a 32 bit system a couple weeks back and had no issues
> but, thanks for the advice.

I've been scripting in GST on Linux (Gentoo and CentOS) and
also Mac OS X for the past year. Prior to that I used Ruby. Most of the
Linux boxen are 32 bit systems, with some 64 bit systems also.
Some of the scripts I've written are at
http://smalltalk.gnu.org/wiki/Examples

There has been the occasional minor bug and Paolo has nailed any issues
pretty quick (outstanding is a bug with the IMAP library which won't
read emails with attachments, and have found an issue with Seaside in
GST on 64 bit systems).

As to Libraries, the main thing I'm missing is an LDAP library which 
I've got around calling ldapsearch and ldapmodify. I started writing a 
wrapper around the C LDAP API with Paolo's help. What we got done was 
working until I got in contact with the developer of the Squeak 
LDAPLayer library and decided to port LDAPLayer to GST when I get some 
time. ...
(Sometime I plan to document the LDAP API wrapper work we did as it will
probably be helpful to someone to have an example)

Version changes have been friendly, I started when GST was at 2.x and it
is at 3.1 and all my original scripts work with no changes.

I actually started using GST because I wanted to do Seaside programming
in Squeak and had very little spare time in 2008 - using GST was a way
of getting Smalltalk experience in my day job.  If I look back, I'd make
the same choice again. I've found GST stable and quick to develop in,
and if something does break, then GST dumps a stack trace with line
numbers which is very helpful.

Regards
Stephen