On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 01:42:25PM -0700, Tim Rowledge wrote:
> Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
> 
> > Is this the right procedure for all platforms, or just Mac?
> > Specifically, I'm intersted in building for Linux.  VMMaker38b3.mcz
> > does not sound as if it's intended for Unix :)
> VMMaker is never, ever, ever, meant for any one platform.

My question concerned the svn repository and revision, as well as the
use of VMMaker.  I was under the impression that the appropriate code
for some platforms, including *nix (excepting Mac OS X), needed to be
retrieved from a separate location than the main sources.  Is that
impression incorrect?

Also, even if the code is in one spot, a particular revision might
work for some platforms and not others.

Finally, on VMMaker itself, I was focused more on the packaging. A
.mcz file is for Macs, I think.

> 
> I build VMMaker on my RISC OS machine, test it as much as I can and
> release a version to the main port team. If I get no complaints I put
> it on SM. As we move ahead there tend to be periods where the public
> version and development version(s) get out of step but really, what
> else could one expect? At some point we will almost certainly be doing
> an atomic blast change that will mean having to have new VMS and images
> that match. 

I count at least 4 components: VMMaker, the out of image source code,
the VM, and the image.  Maybe with the latest packaging the in-image
interpreter/source code makes a 5th component.

It's not obvious to me what combinations are appropriate.  I'm also a
bit fuzzy on where to get them.

>It isn't possible (or practical) to do everything
> completely backward compatibly. We're probably going to move everything
> over to java syntax soon. 

The first sentence makes sense on general terms, but I'm not sure what
these two sentences refer to.  Maybe it's just saying that, for any of
the 4 or 5 components listed earlier, it won't work with arbitrarily
old versions of the other components?  I'm guessing the reference to
java is a joke, but I'm not sure.