[Newbies] Re: squeak and the jvm

Klaus D. Witzel klaus.witzel at cobss.com
Fri Nov 10 15:29:29 UTC 2006


Hi Ben,

on Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:33:49 +0100, you wrote:
> On Nov 8, 2006, at 12:43 PM, Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>> Hi Mike,
>> on Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:13:17 +0100, you wrote:
>>> Yes, this is what I was referring to.  Hotswapping is sort of there
>>> for the jvm.  When I use Eclipse, it tries to hotswap.  Sometimes it
>>> fails.  Sometimes it doesn't.  But, referring the criteria in my reply
>>> to Ron's email, would loosing guaranteed hotswapping cause Squeak to
>>> "lose it's soul?"  I dunnknow.  I'm a newbie.  And I don't write
>>> Squeak for a living.
>>
>> Having read your response to Ron's I think that all you ask for is to  
>> compile Squeak source code into JVM bytecode such that your application  
>> code can access the existing Java API's.
>
> If what you want to do is to access Java objects from Squeak (and vice  
> versa), you could also consider running the two VMs in parallel, and  
> setting up a sort of "bridge" to communicate between them.

Having thought over this for a while, I must say that a VM^2 solution  
sounds intriguing for folks who are in need of the static j* libraries  
(for some reason) but at the same time do not want to miss incremental  
development, image based persistence and BlockContexts :)

> This might help you even if your eventual goal is to port Squeak to run  
> in JVM bytecode.

:) Sure.

> We did a bridge for Squeak and .NET:
>
> 	http://www.saltypickle.com/SqueakDotNet

Yes, I'm an admirer of that effort. I know people have asked for Sq/.Net  
and (hopefully) are using it (Hans, this is what I was talking about,  
perhaps you already have this URL?).

/Klaus

> That program is a port of a similar bridge we did for Ruby. In both  
> cases, we started out running the two VMs in different processes, and  
> just sending socket-based messages between them; later, we got things  
> working in a single process. Getting the basics up and running for one  
> of these things is actually pretty quick, in my experience.
>
> I think that the bridge approach has a lot to recommend it, in that you  
> retain the advantages of both environments, and can use the regular  
> production VM of both. (There are of course still some difficulties.)
>
> Benjamin Schroeder




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