3.1 GTK and VisualGST

GNU Smalltalk comes with GTK bindings and with a browser based on it. The system can be started as gst-browser and will allow the programmer to view the source code for existing classes, to modify existing classes and methods, to get detailed information about the classes and methods, and to evaluate code within the browser. In addition, simple debugging and unit testing tools are provided. An Inspector window allows the programmer to graphically inspect and modify the representation of an object and a walkback inspector was designed which will display a backtrace when the program encounters an error. SUnit tests (see SUnit) can be run from the browser in order to easily support test driven development.

The Transcript global object is redirected to print to the transcript window instead of printing to stdout, and the transcript window as well as the workspaces, unlike the console read-eval-print loop, support variables that live across multiple evaluations:

    a := 2   "Do-it"
    a + 2    "Print-it: 4 will be shown"

To start the browser you can simply type:

    gst-browser

This will load any requested packages, then, if all goes well, a launcher window combining all the basic tools will appear on your display.