Hi,

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> Where I do see a need for this is cross-development for embedded systems. And that also has been done, the most recent one being NXTalk:
>
> http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/projects/nxtalk/

thank you for the pointer; I actually wanted to respond along these
lines myself.

NXTalk does go in that direction; you program in Squeak, and then you
have the compiler translate the Squeak methods to NXTalk bytecodes and
assemble an image. Of course, that's definitely not a Squeak image.
:-)

What NXTalk currently does not have is remote development, though;
i.e., you cannot remotely examine objects, debug, change methods, etc.
It's all like with the old static compilers:
edit-compile-deploy-run-thinkaboutthedarnbug. Note that there is no
"debug" in the cycle. ;-)

If anyone is interested in contributing to NXTalk, we'll happily open
it up. We currently don't have many resources to continue working on
it (which is a pity because the VM is really neat, and so is the way
to program NXT bricks).

Best,

Michael