On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:14:05AM -0500, Miguel Enrique Cob? Martinez wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I want to know the status of VM in squeak.
> I have read the squeakvm.org pages and even the info it is detailed, it
> is not clear enough for me.
> 
> I know that there are two types of vm builds (mainly) for i386 (32bits)
> and x86_64 (64 bits) and that each of these vm can, when configured
> before exporting C source code from VMMaker, interpret 32 or 64 bit
> images.

Correct, but note also that 64-bit Linux systems can run the 32-bit VM
(as long as the correct 32-bit Linux libraries are on the system). Most
64-bit Linux users are using the 32-bit VM because it is available
pre-compiled, and also because it can support a more complete set of
plugins.

> Also, from the documentation, the 64 bit images are mostly of academic
> interest. The 32 bit images are the main kind of images, the ones we
> (almost) all use. And this 32 bit images can be interpreted with 32 or
> 64 bits built squeakvms.

Yes

> On the other site, are the addons that different brilliant people are
> contribuiting to the vm source code in order to have more capabilities
> in the image. This functionality includes:
> 
> closures
> jit
> 
> Now, I have an amd64 Debian GNU/Linux Lenny install and it is all 64 bit
> (x86_64) and Jose Luis Redrejo has made an excellent work on building a
> 64bit squeakvm capable of interpret 32 bit images like the squeak and
> pharo ones.
> 
> But this squeak vm hasn't support for closures (my main need) so, I
> can't run pharo and the new squeak from Andreas on my amd64 machine in a
> native way. I run this images on a 32 bit KVM virtual machine and so far
> I am really impressed but I would like to have a native 64 bit squeakvm
> with closure support.

If you (or Jose Luis Redrejo) rebuild your VM using the latest VMMaker
from SqueakSource, you will have closure support in your 64-bit VM.

> The questions are:
> 
> ??Who are building squeak vm for the different architechtures?

Not including the new developments with Exupery, Cog, etc, VMs for the
primary architectures are built by Ian, Andreas and John, see
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/2513. Currently Ian's Unix distributions
are in need of an update to add support for closures. I expect this
to happen soon (but I can't offer a date).

> I can see that the different squeak vm are hosted on different places
> (smalltalk consulting, squeakvm.org, etc) and with different names
> nomenclatures. This is sometimes confusing, mainly for new users (and
> for old users too). ??Can all the vm be hosted on a single place and with
> a single name format?
> 
> ??What means the version 3.10 for vm? I barely understand that it is
> related to the image that generated, but, if a squeak vm is to be used
> for squeak and pharo, for example, shouldn't have a more neutral version
> number?
> 
> ??What about the new vm implementations, like cog, exupery, stackvm, etc?
> ??Are the sharing the same source code on squeakvm.org or are independent
> and incompatible implementations?
> 
> ??Are plans to build and make available 64 bit versions of the vm for the
> new users with recent equipment (almost all end user PC and laptops sold
> are 64 bit)?

Currently there are no plans for this. My personal view, without having
discussed it with the platform maintainers, is that this should not be
done right now, but perhaps 3 to 6 months from now. The reason I say this
is that a number of 64-bit updates need to be done to plugins (including
FFI, sound and others) before this should be considered ready for general
use. In addition, supporting a 64-bit distribution might cause significant
extra work for the platform maintainers, so I don't want to set any
expectations here.

> Finally I don't have to pressure anyone, because I understand that this
> is done on a free time basis, but I think that this will greatly reduce
> the barrier to squeak/pharo and smalltalk in general.
> 
> Thanks for all the excelent work done.
> 
> Miguel Cob??
>