Pharo 9 Installation hints

Pharo 9 is released, but you still need to follow this procedure to get a VM that works with the launcher on Linux.

All platforms

Using the launcher

• Get new images with the New button in the upper left of the launcher
  • In the Image creation window, clicking on Pharo 9.0 (development version) will, if you're lucky, get you a long list of builds from which to choose. If you're less lucky, after a while you'll get an error dialog that asks if you want to retry. Drag the progress bar off of the top of the dialog so you can press the Retry button. Two tries is typically enough to succeed. It may depend on the load on the files.pharo.org server.
  • In the resulting list, choose the build you want and press Create image.
    • See this wiki's home page for a likely build number.
    • Don't pick a 32-bit image. You may have to resize things to see which ones are 32-bit.
• You can then copy that master image (right-click) to create a working image.

Windows

The first time you launch an image, it will download a reasonable VM and run it.

Linux

The first time you launch an image, it will download an old VM that won't work, and run it. You don't want to do this. There are hints that this may soon be fixed, but right now there are two facts:

1. Pharo 9 on Linux requires use of the headless VM.
2. The launcher will not use the headless VM.

We can, however, trick the launcher into using a headless VM.

Tricking the launcher

The basic idea is to download a headless VM, but make the launcher think it's a headful VM so that the launcher is willing to use it.

1. The launcher settings let you set a VMs Directory. cd to that directory.
2. mkdir 90-x64 ... if the directory already exists, delete the contents of the directory and proceed.
3. cd 90-x64
4. curl https://get.pharo.org/64/vmHeadless90 | bash -- This will download a VM, unpack it in your current directory, and build some setup scripts.
5. mv pharo pharo-headless
6. cp pharo-ui pharo The launcher should now be able to use this VM.