<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Hi Andreas,</div><div><br>On Apr 3, 2015, at 4:04 AM, Andreas Wacknitz <<a href="mailto:A.Wacknitz@gmx.de">A.Wacknitz@gmx.de</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 03.04.15 11:13, schrieb Esteban
Lorenzano:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:1C1233AA-9813-45E3-83F7-79AA3908A885@gmail.com" type="cite">
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<div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On 02 Apr 2015, at 19:20, Eliot Miranda <<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:eliot.miranda@gmail.com" class="">eliot.miranda@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">Hi Andreas,
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""> sorry to be late in replying. This has
been a busy month (I moved house).</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 10:33
AM, Andreas Wacknitz <span dir="ltr" class=""><<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:a.wacknitz@gmx.de" target="_blank" class="">a.wacknitz@gmx.de</a>></span> wrote:<br class="">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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<div style="word-wrap:break-word" class="">Hi Eliot,
<div class=""><br class="">
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">Am 11.03.2015 um 23:15 schrieb
Eliot Miranda <<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:eliot.miranda@gmail.com" target="_blank" class="">eliot.miranda@gmail.com</a>>:</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">HI Andreas,
<div class="gmail_extra"><br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar
11, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Andreas
Wacknitz <span dir="ltr" class=""><<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:a.wacknitz@gmx.de" target="_blank" class="">a.wacknitz@gmx.de</a>></span>
wrote:<br class="">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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solid;padding-left:1ex"> <br class="">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word" class="">Hi Clement,
<div class=""><br class="">
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">Am
11.03.2015 um 09:23
schrieb Clément Bera
<<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:bera.clement@gmail.com" target="_blank" class="">bera.clement@gmail.com</a>>:</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">Hello,
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
About the FreeBSD VM,
Holger Freyther worked
on it so he's the best
person to answer. I
think some people used
it and it was at least
partially working.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
That’s my impression. The
VMMaker contains some
FreeBSD classes but I have
the impression that they are
not complete (and probably
outdated).</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">About
your NativeBoost bug
on openSolaris,
need more
information:</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">- Can
you confirm that you
use an intel
processor on your
openSolaris machine
? I assume that yes
but I ask because
solaris were
typically running on
other processors.
NativeBoost, as of
today, works only
with intel
processor.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Yes, my Sun Ultra 24 is an
Intel based Workstation
(Q9300).</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">
<div class="">- Do you
build the Cog VM or
Stack VM ? I mean
PharoVMBuild or
PharoSVMBuild ? I
think the
PharoSVMBuild does
not include
NativeBoost by
default, that may be
your problem.
There's a fix
somewhere...</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
PharoVM from "branch
'master' of <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm" target="_blank" class="">https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm</a>" (thus
Cog VM).</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">I would like to fold
back any changes into the svn
master repository for Cog. What
are the diffs? (If you have time
to send me the diffs that would
save me a lot of time).</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
I don’t know whether there is much to harvest
from what I did. As far as I remember most of
my work was hacking the generator image
created by the pharo vm scripts (for my Mac)
in order to make</div>
<div class="">the resulting C code to compile
under openindiana. The basis for Solaris was
already there (and as far as I can see it is
also in the Squeak VM sources). I only tweaked
some definitions and includes.</div>
<div class="">I will look at my notes tomorrow
and will post if I will find something
relevant.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">I am curios about the future of
the PharoVM. The main development of the VM
seem to happen in the SqueakVM (by you).
Getting the Spur changes into the PharoVM seem
to be a lot of work.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Note that this will happen (or is
already happening). Esteban is working on building
the Spur version of Pharo, so he is doing this
work. But actually it *isn't* that much work.
There is basically a trio of new memory management
files for each platform, e.g.
platforms/unix/vm/sqUnixSpurMemory.c, and a new
source tree for the spur vm, spursrc/vm. The system
is already set up to build multiple VMs (at least
the svn tree is).</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>Yes, this is already done. We are building spur VMs and
images since awhile now. You can find all the related jobs
here: </div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://ci.inria.fr/pharo/view/4.0-VM-Spur/" class="">https://ci.inria.fr/pharo/view/4.0-VM-Spur/</a></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
If I follow this link and what is being used there brings me to the
ordinary PharoVm project on github:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm">https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm</a><br>
There are three branches: master, develop and spur64. Which one is
being used to build PharoVM-spur32?<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1C1233AA-9813-45E3-83F7-79AA3908A885@gmail.com" type="cite">
<div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>And as Eliot says… is not *much* work… except when it is :)</div>
<div>In fact, we were planning to release Pharo 4 (next week)
with a Spur VM, but we didn’t finish all the small things
around. So we will release next July (or around) a Pharo 4S
(S, for Spur) with “official” spur support. We do not want to
stay to much time in older versions. Also, our development
process is different </div>
</div>
</blockquote>
This explanation irritates me: Pharo 4 will be released soon with a
Spur VM? And then around summer Pharo 4S? Isn't it a contradiction?<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1C1233AA-9813-45E3-83F7-79AA3908A885@gmail.com" type="cite">
<div>
<div>than squeak, AFAIK… we drop backward compatibility in a
regular basis. Which basically means we will move to spur and
we will drop support for older versions. <br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
That's OK, but I am still, hmm say confused, because Eliot is
changing A LOT (just look at what has been released during the last
days), but PharoVM hasn't been<br>
changed for some days (I am following the master branch closely). So
there is a rapid development in the Cog branch of the SqueakVM. The
changes in the PharoVM are much slower (at least as I recognise it).<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div>It may seem like I'm changing a lot, but I am /not/ changing the base and Spur VMs much. I am only fixing bugs I. spur. That's because I'm stabilising the VM for the Squeak 5 release.<div><br></div><div>The changes are in two areas that are as yet unreleased. One area is the JIT for ARM that Tim and I are working on. The other area is Sista, the speculative inliner, that Clément and I are working on.<div><br></div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>I have more questions but I am reluctant to disturb you further as
you must be quite busy atm.<br>
<br>
Best regards<br>
Andreas<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1C1233AA-9813-45E3-83F7-79AA3908A885@gmail.com" type="cite">
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word" class="">
<div class="">Wouldn’t it be better to move back
the changes of the PharoVM into the SqueakVM and
have a united development?</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Well, I don't think the Pharo community
will be willing to move to svn. SOme time I may be
able to move to git. But yes, I *would* like to see
important fixes merged back into the SqueakVM. I
think this is very important. I'm too overloaded to
look at the pharovm so I'm dependent on those
working on the pharovm in giut to send me changes
for integration.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>Right, we are happy with our process and I do not see it
fitting with svn. We changed a lot of “organisational” stuff
to ensure traceability and “buildability” (if such word
exists…). And we have made a lot of progress in that area
using git and github infrastructure at a point most of the
time to incorporate a change we just accept a pull request. </div>
<div>To be able to do that:</div>
<div>- we have to be sure what version of each component (vm,
plugin, platform source) is part of the commit info. That’s
why we keep together both platform sources and image sources
(using filetree monticello format). That way each commit has
everything we need to build the new vm. In fact… I have a
script “./newVM <commit>” that does a clone, prepares an
image, generates sources and builds the vm… then I can test if
a pull request is valid. But most of the time that is not
needed, because:</div>
<div>- for each pull request, we fire a travis job that creates
a vm from scratch and then runs all tests we have in Pharo
(and we have improved a lot in that area latest years). They
are not “vm specific tests”, but since they tests all the
system, if vm does not crashes and tests are run, we can be
sure is working (this wouldn’t be possible without right
traceability). </div>
<div>- we also build the vm using CMake, but not directly, we
use CMakeMaker which allow us to define the build in
smalltalk.</div>
<div>- finally, we would like to use the other capabilities (for
documentation, etc.) we gain for free by using github. Not
that we are already using it… but we would like, in the
future. </div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Is there an up-to-date documentation of the processes? Especially if
I want to add more platform support (like openindiana or FreeBSD)?<br>
My time is very limited (my day job is quite different from what I
do in my spare time + my family and my house also need a lot
attention + next to my Smalltalk interets I am also interested in
operating systems) so my reaction time is sometimes quite slow :)<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:1C1233AA-9813-45E3-83F7-79AA3908A885@gmail.com" type="cite">
<div>
<div>So… obviously all of this can be achieved without using git
and github… but there the infrastructure is already done. </div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>Said that. Even if we actually have a different process, we
(Myself, particularly) are trying to reduce the gap between
both VMs. And right now this is the status:</div>
<div>- in the VM itself there is almost no change. AFAIR, just
two small things: </div>
<div>a) I include setjmp.h somewhere, because compiler was
asking for it (We use different versions than Eliot)</div>
<div>b) the macro to read the image is changed, because we
needed to change it for allow build an iOS image. This is just
one line in the image and the addition of one macro in 4
platform sources (Linux, Win and Mac redirects to old macro,
but iOS implements something different)</div>
<div>- In the platforms we have the most important difference,
because we deprecated the “Mac OS” branch in favor of “iOS”,
which in fact should be called OSX, because is the Cocoa
version. I understand Eliot want to go in that direction soon
so we will align in that area too (btw, that branch has growth
organically so we'll need to do some reorganisation to clarify
it, eventually)</div>
<div>- in the plugins, we try to adopt a different approach than
the previous one: instead using particularities of the
platform, we want to align sources as much as possible, so we
use the posix libraries. Again, that’s just when is possible
(and when we have time). The most important change we produced
here is with FilePlugin: we changed it to provide
posix-permissions (and soon we will add primitives to retrieve
also ownership). To allow that, we changed a lot in the
windows version of the plugin, because instead windows
functions we use MinGW. We would like to see this changes
merged.</div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>After that, I think there will be some other minor changes…
not many, and most probably we can remove those differences. </div>
<div><br class="">
</div>
<div>hope this clarify all :)</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
That's a nice explanation at least.<br>
But I am still confused. Especially because you didn't mention
NativeBoost :)<br>
The ffi area also seem to be different and i a flux.<br>
<br>
And still: How to integrate more platforms?<br>
<br>
Regards<br>
Andreas <br>
<br>
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