Hi David!

David Ryan <Oobles at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm a complete newbie to Smalltalk and Squeak but saw Alan Kay's demo at 
> Oopsla last year.  I decided back then that I would have a go at porting 
> squeak to the Playstation2.  Alan Kay's interview on slashdot reminded 
> me that I still hadn't done a thing about it.
> 
> A quick search on the google list shows that Squeak was ported to 
> PS2/linux, however I'd like to do a native build.  I run the web site 
> www.ps2dev.org where a group of people have created an open source dev 
> kit for the ps2.  We have a gcc cross compiler, and enough libraries to 
> get to most parts of the ps2.  We have drivers for USB mouse and 
> keyboard so it should be possible to have the whole environment put on a 
> memory card or CD on a stock standard PS2.  There's 32MB memory in the 
> PS2, so not sure if that will be a problem. 

Well, it depends on how much is left for running Squeak. But Squeak can
almost be made as small/big as you like.

> So where do I start?  Links, examples, etc would be helpful.  I also run 
> a CVS server at ps2dev.org so will be happy to host the port there.

Better to get together with the VM devs, join the list by sending an
email to:

	vm-dev-subscribe at discuss.squeakfoundation.org

(this is a new list replacing the old SourceForge list, so perhaps all
haven't moved over yet)

Then get an account in the Svn repo that Tim pointed out - ask on the
list and see what people say. Possibly they are hesitant regarding write
access since we don't know you much yet. :)

There is also a 10-min-hot readonly mirror at:

	http://box1.squeakfoundation.org/svn/mirrors/squeak/

And finally - one good place to start is Ian's site (Ian Piumarta is the
unix port maintainer):

	http://www-sor.inria.fr/~piumarta/squeak/	

Also, getting and trying out VMMaker is also a good thing. VMMaker is
available on SqueakMap, which is like "apt-get" for Squeak. You can
install packages into Squeak by do open..->SqueakMap Package Loader.
Find VMMaker in there and install it. And possibly read the docs on it -
I think Tim put it in class comments.

VMMaker is a tool for configuring and producing the C source files that
are generated from Squeak. So to build a VM you first run VMMaker which
spits out C-files into a checked out source tree - then you go out and
do the magic incantations for your specific platform.

And let me now find the most important part... ah, here it is:

	http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html

That's Stephane's superb free collection of professional Smalltalk
books. For porting I especially suggest taking a look at one of the
chapters (or possibly more) in the second Squeak book listed there (at
the bottom):

	http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/

	(the chapter of interest is porting-subfinal_2.pdf)

But remember that the info may be a bit outdated there.

> Thanks,
> David.

regards, Göran