[Vm-dev] Compiling squeak-vm for Linux 64bit

[David T. Lewis]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 07:36:22PM -0400, whaevr wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 7:27 PM, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 06:04:59PM -0400, whaevr wrote:
> > >
> > > Sucess!
> > >
> > > Screenshot:
> > >
> > > http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/5656/81857129.png
> >
> > Nice!
> >
> > > Didn't have to change my pkgbuild for etoys or anything. I do have the
> > > pkgbuild for squeak-vm to checkout of svn for a source. I don't know why
> > it
> > > didn't work before with the tarball. I'll brush these pkgbuilds up to
> > > standard and ship them off to be included in the aur asap!
> >
> > Excellent, good progress. A word of caution though: Be careful not
> > to set the expectation that this is a solid VM. It compiles and runs,
> > but I can guarantee 100% that there will be problems at runtime,
> > including crashing the VM when certain functions are exercised. This
> > is just a matter of working though the type declarations in some VM
> > plugins (and the sound functions apparently), but we are not there
> > yet for 64-bit platforms and EToys users are not going to be happy
> > if the VM crashes in the middle of their creative work ;)
>  
> Alright then, I'll hold off on sending the pkgbuilds then. I haven't sent
> them yet, I've been trying to figure out if its possible to do a selective
> svn checkout. I don't need to checkout the the windows and mac versions.

Bert, help me out on this. Who is the target audience? It's great if
this get released to folks on an experimental basis, but it would be
a mistake to provide it to EToys users who expect a stable and reliable
system.

> Suppose I should wait then for the next stable squeak release?
> 

I'm not sure what the timing would be on this. The stable, supported
Squeak VMs are currently targeted at 32-bit platforms, and for the
most part people using 64-bit platforms are probably building their
own. My hunch is that most users of 64-bit VMs are either hobbyists
like me, or people running servers (such as Seaside web applications)
where the various multimedia plugins are not important. For EToys,
the multimedia functions should work without problems, so that is
why I am saying to be cautious.

Dave