[Vm-dev] VM Recipe: How to build an interpreter VM on Linux

[Tobias Pape]

Hi,

On 13.04.2015, at 04:57, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:

> 
> How to build an interpreter VM from source on a typical Linux or Unix system:
> 
> Install development tools for your Linux system (32-bit libraries are not required).
> 
> Install CMake, either from your Linux distribution or from www.cmake.org
> 
> Install Subversion, either from your Linux distributiion or from
> https://subversion.apache.org/
> 
> Make a new, empty, directory for your work.
> 
> In that directory, download the full platforms sources from the Subversion
> repository. Download everything, whether you need it or not. The Subversion
> directory information will be used in the build process, so do not cut
> corners to save space.
> 
>  $ svn co http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/trunk/platforms
> 
> Also in the new directory, download the generated sources. This is an up to
> date copy of source files generated from the Smalltalk source code in VMMaker.
> You can generate them yourself by loading VMMaker, but using the files from
> the Subversion repository is a faster way to get started.
> 
>  $ svn co http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/trunk/src
> 
> You will now have ./platforms and ./src directories with the latest source
> code for the VM. Make another subdirectory called ./build that you will
> use to build the VM.
> 
>  $ mkdir build
> 
> Change to the build directory.
> 
>  $ cd build
> 
> Copy the example Makefile into your build directory.
> 
>  $ cp ../platforms/unix/cmake/Makefile.example Makefile
> 
> Build the VM
> 
>  $ make
> 

Hang on, I thought this was all CMake now.
Wouldn't I just do

cmake .. # or ccmake for that matter
make
# and so on

> Install the VM
> 
>  $ sudo make install
> 
> You now have a VM that runs that classic Squeak image formats, including
> the 64-bit version (see http://build.squeak.org/job/Squeak%2064-bit%20image/).

This runs _both_ 32 bit  images and 64 bit images?
Nice!


> 
> This is a traditional context interpreter VM. It will not run the latest
> high performance Spur image formats. Please refer to the Cog and Spur VM
> development at http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/ and
> http://www.mirandabanda.org/files/Cog/VM/ for the latest Cog and Spur
> VM development, and for VMs that support the new Spur image formats.
> 
> Dave