[squeak-dev] Re: New macintosh vm builder & maintainer: Esteban Lorenzano

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Mon Nov 22 23:42:13 UTC 2010


On 23.11.2010, at 00:22, Esteban Lorenzano wrote:

> Hi,
> Thank you all for all your best wishes... I know, John work will be really hard to match, but he wants to pass the responsibility, and I accepted because he promise to guide me for awhile, until I can build the mac vm's... Of course, I have A LOT of things to learn, before been a good builder, but I'll do my best, so, please, be kind... it will take time, until the role is fullfilled in a satisfactory way :)

Thank you for stepping up to this important task!

> Now, for the coming work, I thought on what would be the first steps... these are my ideas:
> 
> 1) Create a hudson configuration for the vms, so it can be built automatically. Of course, there are two problems here:
> a) we need a good test batery, and the vm has not. To solve this, I think the pharo tests will ne a good "starting vm suite": If the tests succed, we can hope the vm "more or less" works.
> b) we need a mac hudson server. Maybe pharo guys can help here, but I dunno...
> 
> 1.1) Infraestructure: we need a place were publish new built vms (John's place does not have sense any more)... do you know a place. I suppose squeakvm.org is a good place, but maybe not. Any idea?

We are in the process of moving the VM sources and downloads to Google Code:

	http://code.google.com/p/squeakvm/

I just added you :)

> 2) 4.x series are obsolete, I will focus my work on keep up-to-date 5.x series. Merge with cog is very important here :)
> Also, I want to work with Eliot on his vmmaker code generation changes, but this will take more time as the code generation insights are triky.
> 
> 3) Keep the vm working with new changes introduced by apple. Next year will be Lion, and before that, the new app. store...
> 
> So, I think I have a lot of work to begin... please let me know if there are important things I'm missing.

Well, the one thing I'd like to point out is that I don't consider the 4.x series obsolete yet. It's the only one that still supports PowerPC Macs which are still in use in many schools that use Etoys and Scratch. Also, quite a few older projects do not have closure-images yet. It would be good if you could at least keep the 4.x series alive, even if new development concentrates on 5.x/Cog.

- Bert - 

> NOTE: As I'm learning, please, when you commit something in VMMaker who needs a special mac treatment, make a comment so I can know it... otherwise the change can be lost in the limbo...
> 
> And, finally, I want to say we are all going to miss you John, and I more than anybody!
> 
> Cheers,
> Esteban
> 
> pd: btw... I will need write permission on squeakvm.org... do you know who I need to ask for?
> 
> On 2010-11-21 22:42:07 -0300, John M McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> said:
> 
>> Ten years back I took over the role of maintaining the Macintosh VM from
>> John Maloney. Dan Ingalls wrote a letter of responsibility for me, which
>> I accepted and have strived to carry forward.
>> But it's time to assume a different role and I have asked Esteban
>> Lorenzano  to take over the build responsibility. Some of you know him
>> already from his role in building Mars for Squeak, his presentations at
>> ESUG conferences, and the awards he has won for his technical
>> innovations.
>> It's been a fun decade & three month, lots of versions were created,
>> Apple unlike other other OS providers has driven lots of change and
>> excitement, now they look forward to an OS-X app store, so it's time for
>> someone new and eager to figure out how to address that.  Over that
>> decade we've moved from 68040 based machines, thru PowerPC to MacIntel,
>> and from OS-9 thru 7 generations of OS-X.
>> On Jan 1st 2011 (or earlier) I  will no longer do builds or officially
>> support the macintosh VM, I will of course help Esteban thru any
>> difficulties in the migration of responsibilities, and I'll forward that
>> letter from Dan, it's steeped with responsibility, a bit of honour,
>> expectations of hours (decades?) of work, and I assure Esteban a great
>> journey. Today for Esteban I consolidated folders of Squeak VM build
>> memories which came to nearly 6GB of stuff, fortunately most of it is
>> obsolete because of the Cocoa os-x V5 rewrite.
>> I thank the community for bearing with me for the good times and the
>> rough times as I fought the daemons of operating system change, no doubt
>> I'll watch how things progress, yet the responsibility for what happens
>> will lie elsewhere.
>> Some close friends have asked am I giving up Squeak & Smalltalk? No it's
>> just a change of pace, I'll be around to poke at interesting issues, and
>> at this time I welcome any paid consulting (Smalltalk or iOS), email me
>> if you have leads...
>> Over the years, Viewpoints Research Institute, ESUG and others have
>> provide some funding for this work, I thank them for their
>> contributions.
>> Any message of thanks should be send to my wife of 27 years
>> cordelia at mac.com who has diligently support my contributions to the
>> Smalltalk community and as a non computer person always wondered why?
>> For Sophie we had a saying: "For the betterment of mankind" . For the
>> folks who worked on Smalltalk, Sophie, and the OLPC they know why we do
>> this.
>> To the other VM maintainers I thank them for them for the trust that I
>> would do the right thing, so for Squeak onward we go....
>> -
>> =========================
>> =========================
>> =========================
>> John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com>   Twitter:
>> squeaker68882
>> Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
>> =========================
>> =========================
>> =========================
> 
> 
> 
> 





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