[Vm-dev] 64bit: "This interpreter (vers. 68000) cannot read image file (vers. 274877913446)."

[David T. Lewis]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 11:23:04AM +0100, John Thornborrow wrote:
>  
> Hello all,
> 
> This is my first message to this list.
> 
> I have compiled a 64bit VM for my Gentoo 64bit Intel Core2Duo machine,
> and I receive the message "This interpreter (vers. 68000) cannot read
> image file (vers. 274877913446)." for any image I try to run. I'm unable
> to identify a cause/solution; can anyone help?
> 
> Apologies if this is a question asked very frequently.

Hi John, and welcome to the list.

Just uncheck the "64 bit VM" box in your VMMaker. I guess that the balloon
help for this is misleading, instead of saying "Set to build to 32 bit VM
or a 64 bit VM" perhaps it should say "Build VM for 64 bit image".

64 bit images are rare, unappreciated, and poorly supported (all Squeak
images of practical interest are 32 bit images with 32 bit object memory
word size). However, 64 bit VMs are commonplace and work quite well on
hardware and operating systems such as yours. You may need to load the
changes on Mantis bug report 5688, and check Mantis for other issues in
the "Squeak 64 bit" category if you run into problems, but other than
that a 64 bit VM built on your system should work fine and should run
normal 32 bit images without problems.

Dave