[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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