On 3/25/04 at 2:43 PM, squeak-dev-request at lists.squeakfoundation.org
wrote:

> a point and click UI. If you find problems with the
> documentation or the tool, please let me know. I've put a deal
> of effort into trying to make this a thoroughly effective and
> well built tool and appreciate all feedback to help improve it.

Thanks Ned and Tim-

My inital question had been spurred a late-night lack of success with
VMMakerTool, which turned out to be trivially simple once I'd figured it
out. The tool seems to work very well.

If I had one comment to make, it is that the information and
documentation on the Squeak Wiki is not well pruned. You have a lot of
old information co-existing with the newest. The "Porting Chapter" of
the White book is an example: there may be useful info there, but the
basic startup info is not current.

The Wiki pages also aren't date stamped as far as I can tell, so it's
hard to figure out what's the latest info, as the Wiki has links to both
obsolete and current info. For example, the VMMakerTool info doesn't
make a claim, as I remember, that it supercedes the info on
InterpreterSupportCode, (or is the recommended method for x.x version
and beyond), etc.

The problem I had was that VMMakerTool doesn't semm to like path
directories other than ./src, which I finally found out by rolling over
the path label and getting some balloon help to that effect. This
information should be in the help file.

It was compounded with the ambiguities of what the CVS source modules
should be called after they are checked out from SourceForge. Once I had
understood my problem was with directories, it was pretty easy to figure
out, although I am still unable to get VMMakerTool to let me shift
between (Mac OS, Win32, etc.) platform modules.


> Building a custom configuration of VM is pretty simple from the
> VMMaker end but you'll need to get very friendly with your
> platforms's make and compiler. Being on good terms with a
> debugger is useful as well.

VMMAkerTool produced an "interp.c" that seems to compile very easily. I
get a bunch of Warnings on functions that are declared as "int," but do
not return a value. Not sure whether this is an issue yet or not.

. . . . . . .

I've been trying to compile MacMinimal.c, as a simple wrapper to base my
work on, and am getting a few (16) errors because functions are being
redeclared, sometimes as many as three times. Here's the source tree:


sqConfig.h _________
(2001/12/18)        |
                    |_ sq.h 
                    |  (2003/12/02)__________
sqVirtualMachine.h__|                        |
(2002/5/5)                                   |
                                             |
                       filePlugIn.h__________|__macMinimal.c
                       (2002/1/29)           |  (2002/8/6)
                                             |
                                             |
                       sqPlatformSpecific.h__| 
                       (2003/6/6)
                       
So it seems that, for example, a function like ioMsecs() is being
defined in sq.h and sqPlatformSpecific.h as well macMinimal.c. Is there
any strategy you could suggest for resolving these declarations? Should
I use the most recent definition? The most Mac specific? Any suggestions
would be appreciated!

. . . . . . . . 

This last question gets back to the issue of "ambiguous" information on
the Wiki. I'd like to get a "BASIC" version of the Squeak image. The
Wiki alludes to its existence, and suggests it's downloadable, but I
haven't been able to locate anything. The Wiki basically loops between
definition pages for the "FULL" and "BASIC" images telling about the
existence of other material, but doesn't point you there.

So IS there a "BASIC" image? Or is there Squeak code to file one out? Or
do I just run a copy of the "FULL" image and trash what I think I don't
need?

Sorry to be such a pain. Hopefully this info is useful. And I'd
certainly, as I get more familiar with what's what, be happy to help
with documentation chores or whatever.

Thanks again,

Tad Turner