SmallWorld is a very simple Smalltalk Virtual Machine written in Java. It is derived from Tim Budd's Smalltalk. The original import was taken from the state of the SmallWorld.tar file found at http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~budd/SmallWorld/Source/SmallWorld.tar dated 10-Nov-2004
This version extends the original in several ways:
- The serialization format no longer depends on Java serialization.
- The GUI has been decoupled from the interpreter.
- The Smalltalk classes are in plain text files for easier browsing. These
were extracted from the main image using
Class>>fileOut. Also included are some classes (related to the compiler) which are in the image, but not listed in the main class browser (they were probably explicitly removed.) - Code has been reformatted, and warnings/deprecation reduced.
SmallWorld is built and run with Gradle. Simply run
./gradlew run
and you're good to go! It will open a Swing-based user interface for evaluating expressions, browsing classes, and so on.
It is possible to run a version of SmallWorld from the command line. Look at
build.gradle for more details. You should then be able to run ./gradew commandline to start tyhe interpreter. Typing commands at this prompt will
cause the input string to be run ("doIt"). For example:
> Task :commandline
image initialized
SmallWorld> 3 + 2
Running task: 3 + 2
SmallInt: 5
Task complete
SmallWorld> 'hello' size
Running task: 'hello' size
SmallInt: 5
Task complete
SmallWorld> ((1 / 3) + (3 / 4)) printString
Running task: ((1 / 3) + (3 / 4)) printString
(13/12)
Task complete
SmallWorld>
Hit Ctrl-D to exit.