Pharo 2.0 shines light on hundreds of improvements

The developers of the Pharo Smalltalk fork have released version 2.0 of the language. Pharo was originally forked from the Squeak open source Smalltalk implementation with a goal to remove unneeded code from Squeak. It also serves as the reference implementation of the Seaside web application framework. Pharo 2.0 closes over 1,300 bugs, including three bugs with the rather lively category of "Horrible Error".

Pharo 2.0 is the second major release of the project; the first stable version arrived in April 2010. Improvements in the new version include rewritten PluggableTextMorph and TextHighlight functions, a new "Spotlight" search system, and the integration of the new Spec user interface framework.

Benjamin Van Ryseghem's Nautilus is the new method browser and the late Squeak and Croquet developer Andreas Raab was honoured with the inclusion of an alternative profiler developed by him. To improve the language's performance, Native Boost and Fuel have been integrated as well. A complete list of all improvements is available in the Pharo bug tracker.

Pharo 2.0 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from the project's web site. Screencasts and documentation is available for developers wishing to start working with the language. Pharo is licensed under the MIT License with parts under the Apache License.

(fab)