Pharo 8.0 Released!

Dear World and dynamic language lovers:

The time has come for Pharo 8.0!

Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language and a powerful environment, focused on simplicity and immediate feedback.

Here are the key highlights of this release:

The 64-bit version has become the recommended version for Windows as it was for Unix and OSX.

Iceberg, the git client for Pharo, reached its version 1.6.5 with several improvements and bugfixes.

Calypso, Pharo’s system browser has new and better refactoring integrations and AST-based suggestions for class definitions.

The unified foreign function interface (UnifiedFFI) has been improved with more support for literal objects, better type coercions, and more documentation.

Several speed improvements in code searches and compilation.

In addition, this version includes several previews of new tools such as the Spec2 GUI framework with native widget integration and the new DrTests test analysis tool and opens the door for the upcoming headless VMs for servers and non-blocking FFI.

These are just the more prominent highlights, but the details are just as important. We have closed a massive amount of issues: 2805 issues!

A comprehensive changelog can be found at the ChangeLogs.

While the technical improvements are significant, still the most impressive fact is that the new code that got in the main Pharo 8.0 image was contributed by more than 75 people.

Pharo is more than code. It is an exciting project involving energetic people.

We thank all the contributors to this release:

Serge Stinckwich, Myroslava Romaniuk, Hilaire Fernandes, Alexandre Bergel, David Bajger, Sean DeNigris, Theodore Moen, Dayne Guerra Calle, Juraj Kubelka, Max Leske, Santiago Jose Dandois, Alistair Grant, Sabine Mana, Chia Yu, Stephan Eggermont, Milton Mamani, Pavel Krivanek, Ben Coman, Marcus Denker, Pierre Misse, Christophe Demarey, Allex Oliveira, Andreina Cota, Theo Rogliano, Clément Dutriez, Quentin Ducasse, Cyril Ferlicot, Cameron Bierwagen, Marek Niepieklo, Clotilde Toullec, Esteban Lorenzano, Vincent Blondeau, Danil Osipchuk, Eiichiro Ito, Noury Bouraqadi, Oleksandr Zaytsev, Jason Riggs, Alain Plantec, Kasper Osterbye, Leonardo Cecchi, Chi Huynh, Santiago Bragagnolo, Antonio Pierro, Pablo Tesone, Tim Mackinnon, Wesley Duerksen, Wilfred Hughes, John Brant, Evelyn Cusi Lopez, Manuel Leuenberger, Thomas Dupriez, Norbert Hartl, Torsten Bergmann, Gabriel Omar Cotelli, Carlo Teixeira, Guille Polito, Torsten Bergman, Damien Pollet, Holger Hans Peter Freyther, Julio Ripoll, Carolina Hernandez Phillips, Julien Delplanque, Hugo Lasnier, James Foster, Will Hensel, Erik Stel, Sven Van Caekenberghe, Martín Dias, Tomohiro Oda, Konrad Hinsen, Sébastien Roccaserra, Stéphane Ducasse, Denis Kudriashov, Ellis Harris, Steven Costiou, Jan Bliznicenko.

(If you contributed with Pharo 8.0 development in any way and we missed your name, please send us a mail and we will add you).

Enjoy!

The Pharo Team

Try Pharo: http://pharo.org/download

Learn Pharo: http://pharo.org/documentation