[Vm-dev] VM support for older image formats (was: Simulating the Cog V3 VM)

Phil (list) pbpublist at gmail.com
Thu May 12 02:44:06 UTC 2016


Dave,

On Wed, 2016-05-11 at 19:50 -0400, David T. Lewis wrote:
> Even the very earliest Squeak images can be run on SqueakJS:
> 
>   http://try.squeak.org/
> 
> The traditional interpreter VM works well for images going back to
> about Squeak 3.2, and up to but not including Spur images. Official
> (but now outdated) releases are on squeakvm.org, and on Linux (not so
> sure of other platforms), it is straightforward to compile an up to
> date version yourself (*):
> 
>   http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6354
> 

Your efforts to keep the ability to build the older VMs alive is
greatly appreciated!  I've actually fired up some early 2.x and 3.x
images within the last month as they still have both historical and
reference value.

> The Cog VMs run recent V3 images, as long as they are closure
> enabled.
> That goes back a number of years now.
> 

Yep, and that's why we (Cuis) are still on Stack and Cog V3 VMs.  We
will be until the changes necessary to forward migrate to Spur are
worked out.  We'll get there eventually, but as none of us have heavy
VM expertise so it takes a while.

> Dave
> 
> (*) If you try this, I would appreciate feedback as to whether you
> encounter any problems. I think that it is a 10 minute recipe for a
> first time VM builder, but I have never had any feedback to confirm
> or deny that claim. If it works or does not work for you, please
> speak up :-)
> 

I can confirm that your docs worked perfectly for a 32-bit build on
Debian 8.  (~10 minutes if you include waiting time for downloading and
building inside of a VM... <60 seconds of my time :-)

Thanks,
Phil


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