On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 11:23:28PM +0000, David Corking wrote:

Hi, this may be an FAQ or I may just have overlooked something obvious. The reason I got confused is that some vm-dev posters seem to use sources from the Cog project's gitorious repository to build Stack VMs on a Jenkins server, and yet http://squeakvm.org/unix/ links to a subversion repository :

1. Which is the current tarball for building official VMs for unix?

(Is it http://www.squeakvm.org/unix/release/Squeak-4.4.7.2357-src.tar.gz ?)

This is the most recent tarball, which is effectively a snapshot of the sources as of the time at which that set of Unix VMs was built.

2. Which is the source code repository for the current Unix Squeak VM

code (in case I need to suggest a patch) ? (Is it ?http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/trunk or https://git.gitorious.org/cogvm/blessed.git ?)

The sources consist of the platform support code along with the code that is directly generated from Smalltalk. The platform sources are http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/trunk and the Smalltalk code is in Monticello files "VMMaker-xxx.yyy" in the http://source.squeak.org/VMMaker repository.

The Cog VM is a branch with platform sources in http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/branches/Cog and Smalltalk code "VMMaker.oscog-xxx.yyy" in the http://source.squeak.org/VMMaker repository. See Eliot's page at http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/ for information.

A number of related VM projects are under active development, including git based repositories, automated cross-platform builds, and VMs custom adapted to support specific projects (e.g. Pharo), and new Android VM development. For build procedures, see package CMakeVMMaker in the source.squeak.org/VMMaker repository. The Subversion trunk and branches/Cog repositories contain build procedures and documentation from their respective authors, including the original cmake build system currently in use with Ian's unix trunk VMs.

The Jenkins server and git mirror repository with CMakeVMMaker are supported by the Pharo project, and you can find many instructional videos and blogs documenting progress on this front.

3. Which Squeak image contains the current SLANG source code to emit

VM C sources? (I guess Squeak Trunk, that is http://ftp.squeak.org/4.4/Squeak4.4-11860.zip with updates from the trunk repository in Monticello. Again, in case I need to submit a patch.)

The Smalltalk source code for the VM (aka "slang") was originally included in all Squeak images, but in recent years has been maintained as an external package (VMMaker) hosted in the source.squeak.org/VMMaker repository.

David (p.s. I need sources in order to figure out if I can get all the x86_64 plugins working. There are no official builds I know of for x86_64, and the Fedora koji build system suggests to me, if I read the koji output correctly, that there is some unintended bitrot in Fedora's 64 bit support for squeak.)

Some portions of the VM (plugins) contain code that has not been cleaned up for compiling on 64-bit platforms, and for this reason it is common to compile VMs in 32-bit mode (-m32) for use on 64-bit Linux, with the requirement that users install various 32-bit libraries. If you are building a VM for your own use, you may prefer to compile in native 64-bit mode.

Dave