[Vm-dev] Simulating trunk6.image in Spur64VMMaker

[Eliot Miranda]

Hi Subbu,

> On Feb 10, 2020, at 11:45 PM, K K Subbu <kksubbu.ml at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 10/02/20 8:59 PM, Eliot Miranda wrote:
>> If you want to develop specific primitives, optimizations, etc, that are invoked from specific Smalltalk expressions you'll find simulating the "reader" image, which contains a Real-Eval-Print Loop (a REPL), much easier than trying to interact with the desktop through the world menu.
> 
> Thank you very much for your quick and detailed response. I created a swiki:
> 
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6640
> http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/79 (updated)
> 
>> It is also perfectly repeatable.  Another approach is to save the image using a doit and have that doit include, after the snapshot, the code you want to run.  Another technique that saves time is to save the image containing the simulator with an open simulator having reached some point, such as the start of a garbage collection. You can then rerun the code you're interested in my reloading the image and continuing the simulator.
> 
> I saw Clement's excellent video at https://youtu.be/hctMBGAXVSs and his blog https://clementbera.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/simulating-the-cog-vm/
> 
>>    What are the options if I want to open V3 images in this simulator?
>> Just change  ObjectMemory Spur32BitMemoryManager to ObjectMemory NewObjectMemory
> 
> I could'nt get the simulator to open 6502/6504 images. I got 'incomaptible image format' error [sic]. When I tried with ObjectMemory, I got a MNU on coInterpreter in initialize.

IIRC Cog only runs 6505 images.  There’s the closure bytecode set constraint and floating point order constraint.  And ObjectMemory won’t work.  If must be NewObjectMemory.

A useful but difficult task would be to merge David’s VMMaker Context interpreter into Andreas’ much improved Context interpreter that he did at Qwaq, that was my starting point for Cog (& is the Context interpreter in VMMaker.oscog).  Amongst his improvements were the profiling improvements that support AndresProfiler.

> Regards .. Subbu