[Vm-dev] faster snapshot support in VM?

[Nicolas Cellier]

OK, thanks to all,
OS dependency is a good reason, we definitely prefer the more portable
Smalltalk way :)
Still, cloning an image with a HydraVM would be a portable option :)
(Efficient if pages can be optimized for copy-on-write which is again
an OS-dependent feature I presume...).

Maybe I'll give a try in Unix just for fun, or I'll have a deeper look
on what's going on exactly.

Cheers

Nicolas

2009/7/17 David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com>:
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 01:36:45AM +0200, Nicolas Cellier wrote:
>>
>> In recent pharo thread
>> [Pharo-project] Save and quit vs. Save - a clue to performance???
>> it is said that saveAndQuit is amazingly fast, while save is damned slow...
>> ... because it goes through all image startup.
>> Cloning the vm/image could be more efficient:
>>
>> primFork
>>   "return true if we are in the forked image, false in the original"
>>
>>   <primitive: XXX>
>>    self error: 'fork failed'
>>
>> snapshot
>>   self primFork ifTrue: [
>>       self aboutToSnapshot.
>>       self primSaveAndQuit.
>>       self returnFromSnapshot].
>>
>
> The primFork that you describe has been part of OSProcess for a long
> time. The #primitiveForkSqueakprimitiveForkSqueak primitive is in the
> unix flavor of OSProcessPlugin, so it's probably already in whatever
> unix VM you are running today.  For what you describe, you would probably
> want to invoke it with UnixProcess>>forkHeadlessSqueakAndDoThenQuit:
>
> So you can just try it and see if it gives the performance you want.
>
>> Apart being dependent on another feature of the OS, do you know any
>> reason why this would not work?
>
> It definitely does work, but it is very OS dependent, and that's an
> extremely good reason for not doing it as a general solution.
>
> I don't understand why save should be "amazingly slow".  What's going
> on in the image startup that would cause this be become an issue? It
> sounds to me like somebody is not checking the resuming flag in a
> #startup: method, hence running a bunch of initialization code that
> is not required after an image save.
>
> Dave
>
>