[Vm-dev] VM Maker: VMMaker-oscog-dtl.59.mcz

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Mon Apr 18 14:46:25 UTC 2011


On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 12:12:22PM +0200, Levente Uzonyi wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2011, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> 
> >
> >On 18.04.2011, at 07:23, squeak-dev-noreply at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> >wrote:
> >
> >>Add primitiveImageFormatVersion, an optional named primitive answering 
> >>the image format number of the current image. This is the value stored in 
> >>the first word of an image file header when the image is saved, and 
> >>possibly modified on image load if the VM adds or removes capabilities 
> >>for the running image. This primitive was added to VMMaker trunk in 
> >>VMMaker-dtl.169. Rationale: supports float word order handing for image 
> >>segments, reference 
> >>http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2011-April/007712.html
> >
> >Is there a way to detect if an image will be saved in a different format 
> >than it was loaded?
> >
> >In some images I want to avoid saving them accidentally as a Cog image. I 
> >have been doing this by adding a preference "warnAboutSavingAsCog" and 
> >checking the VM version string for "cog". With this new primitive I could 
> >more reliably detect Cog, but I guess no information about the loaded 
> >image is retained?
> 
> Why don't you read the first four bytes from the image file to get the 
> image version? Also, there's SmalltalkImage >> #isRunningCog to check if 
> the current VM is a CogVM.
> 
> imageFormat := (FileStream fileNamed: Smalltalk imageName do: [ :file |
> 	file binary; next: 4 ]) unsignedLongAt: 1 bigEndian: false.
> isCogVM := Smalltalk isRunningCog.

The image format number in the file is not necessarily the same as the
image format currently being used. For example, when an interpreter VM
reads an image saved from Cog (i.e. format 6505), it converts the image
to format 6504 prior to entering the interpreter. So the disk file will
tell you that you are using a 6505 image, but the VM knows better and
will report the current image format version as 6504.

Similarly, Cog converts a 6504 image from disk into a 6505 image in
memory, and will later save the image as 6505.

Dave



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