[Vm-dev] Re: looking for feedback on Cocoa Cog MT VM

[Esteban Lorenzano]

Hi,

> Also, more complex VMs are harder to port to other systems. Cog is more complex than the Stack VM, which is more complex than the Interpreter VM. E.g. there is no ARM port of Cog yet, whereas Stack and Interpreter VMs do work.

this is not completely true, IMHO. As I saw, platform dependent code between interpreter, stack and cog is exactly the same, so I don't see a reason why stack can't replace interpreter in all non jit-compliant platforms (like iOS).  

What is definitively true, is the fact that there are a lot of machines who needs to use a 4.x series (in mac versions), and a lot of legacy code who will be using this "old" vm too... and because of this, 4.x series will be around a long time. 
What I think it will be disappearing, before than the 4.x series is the 5.x series: this is "old" interpreter vm with cocoa platform code. Why? just because this emerging is more or less coexisting with cog/stack vms, and right now the unique use I can found for this is that the latest version (5.7.4.1) can open a cog saved image. So, people will use it while cog/stack vms are in "stabilization" phase, but right after that, I see no reason to keep it (if I'm wrong at this, please let me know).
I any case, I will be releasing 5.x series with plugins compiled, etc., as my timeline says, "sometime soon", and I will be releasing updated versions time to time :)

cheers,
Esteban