squeak at cs.uiuc.edu wrote:

Thank you all for your responses.  Kevin, I have tried rebuilding the VM as you described below.  I can successfully compile a new VM, but I still get errors running the FFI as before.  When I run "Smalltalk listLoadedModules," or "Smalltalk listBuiltinModules," the FFI plugin isn't listed.  I can't see anything in the image that loads plugins.  I think this area is close to where my problem lies.  

I have compiled the VM many times today, and have tried Tim Rowledge's suggestions as well.  None of these attempts have been able to call the FFI.  I have used the --enable-ffi=yes option on the configure program.  One thing I've noticed about the configure program  is the output it displays, "checking for ffi_call  in -lffi...no."  I have never seen it display a "yes."  I don't know if that is important or what it means.


One semi-related question:  I think I'm a little bit familiar with the plugin c files.  But since I've been digging around in the C and make files, I haven't seen a c program with a main function.  I was thinking it would be in interp.c.  Can someone tell me what the main c files of Squeak are?  Somehow I think it would help me get a better picture of how this all fits together behind the curtain.


>Yes, I did get things working fine.  I had to rebuild the VM with 
>--enable-ffi=yes explicitly set to make it work, however.  After >that, the 
>examples worked great, even without your patch linked above  (the >module: 
>'X11' stuff works just fine since libX11.so can be easily found).

>Of course, when I rebuilt the VM there were no pluginized modules >beyond 
>Profiler.so and one other...there was no SqueakFFIPrims.so, so it >must have 
>all been built in to the VM.  I'm still a little in the dark about >building a 
>modular VM on UNIX..