[Vm-dev] Adding VectorEnginePlugin to standard VM distributions for Cuis/Squeak

[David T. Lewis]

VectorEnginePlugin is a new plugin by Juan Vuletich that can be added to
standard VM builds as an external plugin. Currently it is used principally
by Cuis, but is applicable to Squeak and related images as well.

The Smalltalk slang source is hosted at https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk
and the package file for fileIn to Cuis or Squeak is
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/blob/master/Packages/Features/VectorEnginePlugin.pck.st.

No external platforms files are required. The plugin source can be
generated from any Cuis or Squeak VMMaker image and is portable for any
platform or VM flavor. Squeak (and hence any VMMaker image) already has
the necessary support for filing in the plugin without modification.

The minimal requirement for adding this to the opensmalltalk-vm (and traditional
squeakvm) is to commit the generated sources to src/plugins/VectorEnginePlugin/
and add it to the the various plugins.ext files.

Beyond that, I want to ask in advance how we should support VectorEnginePlugin
moving forward. The simplest thing to do is treat the Cuis GitHub repository
as the upstream repository (which it is), and just check generated sources into
the opensmalltalk-vm and squeakvm.org repositories. This however is different
from what we usually do with plugins that live in Monticello repositories
and are loaded into VMMaker images, usually from repositories hosted on
source.squeak.org or squeaksource.com.

Are there any preferences or recommendations as to how to best handle this?
I have been tracking the VectorEnginePlugin for some time and I'm willing
to do any administrative things that may be needed, including checking in
generated sources and/or possibly setting up and maintaining a Monticello
mirror of the upstream repository (e.g. a project on squeaksource) if
that is preferred.

Thanks for any ideas or suggestions, and thanks to Juan for developing
the new VectorEnginePlugin.

Dave