[Vm-dev] one more thing which may be scratch, may be the vm....

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 2013-02-14, at 15:34, Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 03:29:28PM +0100, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>>> Also, Matthew, which architecture are you running on? x86_64 by chance?
>>> Yes I am.
>> That is vital information. Most likely these plugins are not yet 64-bit
>> clean.
> 
> Huh. In 2013 I rarely consider that anymore. :) I'll test and see what I
> find.

There is zero benefit to Scratch (or any current Squeak app) from running on a 64 bit VM, since all Squeak images in use are 32 bits. It's only thanks to David's hard work recently (and Ian's/Dan's work initially) that it mostly works, for the convenience of Linux folks who insist on doing everything in 64 bits. (Windows and Mac users happily use the 32 bit VMs)

So yes, we are working on it (or rather, Dave is), but the reason it's not finished yet is that it has too little benefit currently.

This will change with a more widespread adoption of 64-bit images (there is an up-to-date 64 bit image, again thanks to David: http://build.squeak.org/job/Squeak%2064-bit%20image/ ) but then again, this will need yet another VM: http://squeakvm.org/squeak64/faq.html

(we hope Linux packagers will hide the VM selection details behind a common squeakvm script that launches the right binary for the image)

>>> I can test in a i386 VM if it helps. (Well, not the camera.)
>> You could simply run the i386 version of Squeak in your 64 bit Linux. That
>> should work perfectly fine.
> 
> That's okay for me, but it's not okay for the Fedora Linux distribution I'm
> working on packaging it for.
> 
>> This might do the job of installing it (untested):
>> 	sudo yum install squeak-vm.i686
> 
> We generally only have 32-bit versions of packages in x86_64 when they're
> white-listed in for a specific reason.


Having "working software" might be a good reason? ;)

- Bert -