[Vm-dev] VMMaker & potential VM Port

Chris Cunnington brasspen at gmail.com
Thu Sep 24 21:47:59 UTC 2015


http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2012-October/166038.html
http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/porting-subfinal%202.pdf
http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/greenberg.pdf

Hi Ken,

The first is a script that will compile a VM for you. I find this gives 
me a control experiment to work with, to create a compilation rig with. 
The second and third are articles from "Squeak: Open Personal Computing 
And Multimedia" about porting and plugins. The second article makes 
clear what objects are and how the VM grips them.

I would say time in gdb and with make is proof things have gone off 
course. The 2012 script from above does all that for you. If you're 
porting, you wouldn't be in VMMaker much, but creating C files in the 
platforms directory for a standard VM. This is a C story, though. Lots 
of C. But from what you told me in Portland of you're programming 
background, it would be no great impediment to you.

Final note, this compiles an Interpreter VM as opposed to a Cog VM, 
which is slower but more comprehensible. Exactly two people know how the 
Cog VM works in its entirety. Bus factor = 2. It is my opinion that 
unless you work for Cadence, there is no clear inside line to compiling 
32-bit Cog. I've compiled 64-bit, but I'm not so sure that's a great 
idea at the moment. My point is, perhaps you want the older, simpler VM 
instead of the JIT'er, which is harder to compile. If you're going to 
attempt the port, perhaps you could start a blog? Ask them at 
planet.smalltalk.org to add it.

Chris

On 2015-09-24 1:43 AM, Ken.Dickey wrote:
>   
> Greetings,
>
> I am trying to scale the effort to port the Squeak VM to the Inferno OS
> 	http://inferno-os.org/
> but have not yet had success building a minimal VM on Linux using Squeak 4.5 and instructions on
> 	http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/build-image/
> or
> 	http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/compiling-the-vm/
> using VMMaker.
>
> I have tried a couple of buildsqueak*.st scripts with Sq 4.5 but the generated code comes up with a black window or fails altogether.
>
> I know we are all busy (I include myself) but if anyone could help out with suggestions I would appreciate it.
>
> I am reluctant to spend more time on this until I can successfully generate and compile C sources and run an image from the gen'ed sources.
>
> Hints are fine.  I have not used C, gdb, or Make this century, so am probably doing something not too bright.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> -KenD



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