Croquet VM issues

[tim Rowledge]

>
> 1) GC improvements: As discussed in April last year
> (see http://discuss.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm-browse? 
> list=vm-dev&cmd=showmsg&msgnum=184)
> we need the weak array fixes and the GC measurements/tweaks that  
> John did. Those actually turn out to be important for us, if only  
> for analysis of current behavior.

Those changes were incorporated LAST APRIL. If you had bothered to  
actually build a VM with any vmmaker since then you'd have found them  
in as agreed. The latest vmmaker can be found on SM, along with  
several earlier versions.

> * @Tim: Does a VMMaker repository exist by now? Like I was saying  
> back then, I am not alltogether happy with the current situation of  
> new releases just popping up on SqueakMap and with no way of seeing  
> what's in there and how things have developed.
No, there is no vmmaker repository.

>
> 2) Floating point accuracy: As discussed in november last year
> (see http://discuss.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm-browse? 
> list=vm-dev&cmd=showmsg&msgnum=365)
Yes, and .... what? I have no record of anything going beyond a vague  
suggestion. How would this have anything to affect vmmaker? You want  
to use it, you change your makefile settings.

>
> Questions:
> * On Mac and Unix, do we implement getSystemAttribute: -1 to return  
> the full path to the executable?
See http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/314 This is a spec that was  
agreed to about 8 years ago. If any platform is non-compliant it  
should be brought into compliance asap.
>
> 3) Some Socket fixes: David Reed made some changes for Sockets  
> which turn out to be critical in particular on Macs and Unix  
> systems. I'm still in the process of bundling up these changes but  
> they are fairly straightforward so I don't see many issues with them.
Submit them in the usual manner and I'll look at them sometime.

>
> Besides the above three, I have one additional question: What is  
> the general status of the 64bit work right now? Do we consider this  
> complete or work in progress or experimental? Can we rule out any  
> ill effects for the 32bit VMs?
As far as I'm concerned the 64 bit stuff is pathetically sulking in a  
corner due to almost nobody having paid it any attention.  I have  
done everything reasoanble for vmmaker but there are a largish number  
of places where there are 'flag: #dan' type comments and there are  
places where there are comments about some change needing work  
someday. The only VMs I know of that have been built and released  
with the 64bit changes incorporated have been on RISC OS and OSX so  
to the best of my knowledge there is no information on whether they  
are any use on windoze or *nix. I was considering backing out all the  
changes since it seems that nobody cares even fractionally enough to  
finish what they started.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: ED: Eject Disk