I'd just like to chime in to second Brian's sentiment. Like a lot of  
folks, I do Smalltalk, not C. And I don't do VMs. It's just not my  
thing, I'm not a VM hacker, like Brian says. The VMs I've used on  
WinCE were ones that Yoshiki compiled a long time ago, and haven't  
been updated since 2002 or so, but I've gotten by.  Obviously, that  
isn't sustainable... But the solution, at least for Brian and I, is  
to use a Linux-based tablet, esp one that uses X11 for its GUI,  
because it's very easy to get Squeak running on it. Out of the folks  
working on handheld Squeak, at least the ones I can think of doing  
work today, there really isn't much interest in VM hacking.

Even in the areas of possibly extending the VM for PDA-specific  
features- tapping into Nokia's GTK+ soft-keyboard and input system  
isn't something I'm interested in, as I'd rather do it in Squeak and  
make it available to any platform you were using it.  I just took  
what Gerald compiled, which was more or less out of the box, and am  
running with it. There are some tweaks I need to make to make it more  
usable on the Nokia 770/N800- giving it an icon to launch and switch  
back and forth to for instance- but these things don't require  
altering the VM.

With these embedded platforms, it really is a matter of having  
someone interested in doing it.  We could, with enough ingenuity have  
Squeak running on any embedded platform with enough juice to power  
it, and there have been ports of a lot of them in the past- there  
even was an EPOC32 port that would probably be a good starting point  
for the Sony-Ericson phones.  But that said, unless you've got  
someone who has a personal reason to have Squeak running on that  
specific OS, with knowledge of the VM and the new OSes APIs it isn't  
likely to happen.  It's a lot easier, and cheaper from one angle, for  
me to recommend purchasing some sort of Linux or CE based PDA to  
someone who wants to get into handheld Squeak rather than learning  
the requisite VM hacking and PalmOS/EPOC/Symbian/Whatever knowledge-  
you can get a used Linux or CE PDA off of eBay for $100, but learning  
that stuff would certainly cost more than a few hours of my time.

Just some thoughts...

Regards,
Aaron

On Mar 10, 2007, at 8:47 PM, Brian Rice wrote:

>
> On Mar 10, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
>
>> Brian Rice wrote:
>>> Obligatory rejoinder: There's plenty of room for improvement in  
>>> helping Squeakers create a porting branch of the Squeak VM and in  
>>> maintaining such a branch with the least effort in concert with  
>>> main-line Squeak updates. Hosting such projects at an official  
>>> Squeak site like squeakvm.org would also be an improvement.
>>
>> Which, if you start a new platform branch instead of trying to  
>> patch existing ones, shouldn't be a problem I think.
>
> This sounds promising, but most of us with interest in handhelds  
> aren't experienced (Squeak) VM hackers, and are not aware of the  
> process involved, especially if we are making relatively slight  
> tweaks to a mature branch, like the Unix branch for the Zaurus PDA  
> or Nokia internet tablets. In a lot of these cases, it's a  
> configuration issue, and the way to make a platform branch that is  
> maintainable is not clear. Most of the existing ports are currently  
> just tarballs of some modified snapshot of the VM sources from a  
> while ago, so it seems like people have found it easiest so far to  
> just hack until it worked and then archive for posterity.
>
> As a non-handheld, but practical example, there have been (mostly- 
> working, but now no longer on the 'net) BeOS ports of some versions  
> of the VM, but it's never gotten to the point where those ports met  
> the main repositories. That's an example of a port whose solution  
> might tell the solver what documentation needs to be available to  
> complete other such ports. Making one solution tractable would make  
> the solution of the handheld problems nearly as tractable.
>
> Another thing occurs to me: one of the factors that makes  
> coordinating Squeak VM development for PDAs is that there are many  
> toolchains (even if gcc-based) for these different systems, and  
> some are proprietary (MSVC), so no one person will likely be able  
> to understand or vet all the ports (especially Ian or you, who have  
> many things on your plates).
>
> So, here are the questions that occur to me:
>
> - Is there a guide for how to do this?
> - If you do find it easy enough to explain in an email, how can we  
> put it on an official Squeak site where it is likely to be found?  
> (The wiki is great, or a README in the SVN tree, but there should  
> at least be a link from squeakvm.org's page or something.)
> - What is the recommended process for submitting patches for such a  
> branch when the level of interaction isn't high enough to merit  
> asking for write access to the SVN server?
> - If a permanent account to the SVN server is justified, how does  
> one make that request?
>
> This kind of information should be published in an obvious place  
> rather than repeated on email.
>
> --
> -Brian
> http://briantrice.com
>
>