On 10/15/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">David T. Lewis</b> <<a href="mailto:lewis@mail.msen.com">lewis@mail.msen.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>64 bit images are rare, unappreciated, and poorly supported (all Squeak<br>images of practical interest are 32 bit images with 32 bit object memory<br>word size). However, 64 bit VMs are commonplace and work quite well on
<br>hardware and operating systems such as yours. You may need to load the<br>changes on Mantis bug report 5688, and check Mantis for other issues in<br>the "Squeak 64 bit" category if you run into problems, but other than
<br>that a 64 bit VM built on your system should work fine and should run<br>normal 32 bit images without problems.</blockquote><div><br>64-bit images are indeed "unappreciated".<br><br>I suspect that part of the reason for the lack of appreciation is that
<br>there's little information about them. For instance, <br><a href="http://squeakvm.org/squeak64/">http://squeakvm.org/squeak64/</a> hasn't been updated since 2004-10-28.<br>That's nearly 3 years ago. <a href="http://wiki.squeak.org:8080/squeak/560">
http://wiki.squeak.org:8080/squeak/560</a><br>has not been updated for even longer.<br><br>I'm sure that there's been a lot of work done by various 64-bit people<br>since then, but if so, then where do I (and other curious people) find
<br>out about it? Are there other sites?<br><br>What would be neat would be a page, either at <a href="http://squeakvm.org">squeakvm.org</a> or on<br>the wiki, which would answer some of the common 64-bit questions<br>that come up from time to time. For instance, here are some of mine:
<br><br>- For which hardware/OS combinations is there a 64-bit VM?<br>- Does this VM run both 32-bit and 64-bit images?<br>- How do I convert a 32-bit image to a 64-bit one?<br>- My OS allows a single process to grow to 3.75GB
; if I need a lot of<br>
objects can I use a 32-bit image / VM, or must I use a 64-bit one?<br>- What are the advantages/disadvantages to using 64-bits?<br>- Why isn't there an officially-released 64-bit image?<br><br>I suspect that if this basic information was available, there'd be rather
<br>more interest, which would lead to more testing, more bug reports,<br>more fixes, etc.<br><br>Andrew<br></div></div>