Spoon

spoon@lists.squeakfoundation.org

194 discussions

Squat progress 19 July 2003: new version of complete installation package
by Craig Latta 20 Jul '03

20 Jul '03

(mailing list info at http://netjam.org/squat ) Hi-- Now that I've made a suitably small virtual machine, I've finished a new version of a complete installation package for Squat, along the lines of "relief" (http://netjam.org/relief ). It's a webpage that, when visited, downloads an installer program and runs it. The installer program downloads a snapshot, a virtual machine, and the Flow plugin, decompresses the virtual machine and the Flow plugin, and runs the virtual machine. The virtual machine decompresses the snapshot, and the snapshot updates itself. The current sizes are 93,352 bytes for the snapshot, 18,973 bytes for the Flow plugin, 107,642 bytes for the virtual machine, and 61,440 bytes for the installer program, for a total of 281,407 bytes. The decompressor is is both the virtual machine and installer; I could save about 40K by loading it dynamically in each case... I'll save that for some future version. Next I'm going to write my first Squat application, which is a snapshot that updates itself enough to display my resume, then displays it. :) thanks, -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org [|] Proceed for Truth!

1 0

Squat progress 17 July 2003: snapshot work finished, VM work started
by Craig Latta 19 Jul '03

19 Jul '03

(mailing list info at http://netjam.org/squat ) Hi-- Today I unloaded all the compiled methods which hadn't been run since just before the previous snapshot, made a snapshot, and compressed it with bz2. I added a bz2 decompressor to the virtual machine, and successfully ran the snapshot. The snapshot size on disk is 93,352 bytes ("91 KB"). I consider the snapshot part of the project finished, although I'm sure a few more bytes could be eked out by doing symbol compression, etc. (I'm not going to bother, though, since they make using the snapshot significantly less pleasant). There is no accurate space analysis for this snapshot, since the act of making one would change the size of the snapshot significantly. :) A space analyzer that ran from a simulator would be useful. When the snapshot is decompressed into RAM, and a space analysis is printed, the space analysis at http://netjam.org/squat/space2.txt is accurate. In summary, the 91 KB file yields a 280 KB object memory, and the system is arbitrarily extensible from there. Now I'm working on making the smallest possible virtual machine that will run this snapshot. thanks, -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org [|] Proceed for Truth!

1 0

Squat progress 17 July 2003: method activation marking
by Craig Latta 18 Jul '03

18 Jul '03

(mailing list info at http://netjam.org/squat ) Hi-- I've added support for marking each method as it is run, giving me a better (but not perfect) idea of which methods I can swap out. I've got a few interesting numbers. If I clear all method marks, then snapshot, resume, and ask for a tally of marked and unmarked methods, I get 458 marked and 1766 unmarked (a full space analysis is at http://netjam.org/squat/space2.txt ). If I clear all method marks and immediately ask for the tally I get 27 marked and 2197 unmarked. (The queries are all done via remote message-sending, to a snapshot which has no methods swapped out.) -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org [|] Proceed for Truth!

1 0

Squat progress 12 July 2003
by Craig Latta 14 Jul '03

14 Jul '03

(Squat mailing list info at http://netjam.org/squat ) Hi-- Things are getting exciting now. :) I can now swap out compiled methods and method dictionaries on demand, then automatically and seamlessly swap them back in from an update server when messages requiring them are sent. This ability provides for a significant reduction in image size (about 30%). I'm in the process of swapping out most of the behavior in the minimal system. Space analyses will be at http://netjam.org/squat/space2.txt . I have a demo where I open a remote browser on a headless snapshot that has had all the compilation and decompilation support removed, then, as I browse around, some of it gets swapped back in. I plan to make a short movie of this. I also have a design for writing snapshots to a socket, allowing the removal of all filesystem support. A list of projected surviving classes is at http://netjam.org/squat/survivors . thanks, -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org [|] Proceed for Truth!

2 2

Squat progress 15 June 2003
by Craig Latta 15 Jun '03

15 Jun '03

Hi-- Things are getting smaller, which is great, but today's fun news is that I have the whole show running on a handheld (500k snapshot remotely browsing the code of a 250k headless snapshot, in 1024x768 on a 320x240 screen with pan and zoom, keyboard optional). The slave snapshot can be either on the handheld itself or elsewhere on the Net. Now it *really* feels like a video game. :) -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

1 0

Squat progress 8 June 2003
by Craig Latta 11 Jun '03

11 Jun '03

Hi-- I've got a system browser working that browses the system dictionary of a remote snapshot. Using it, I just browsed all remote references to a selector in a remote snapshot, and removed a remote method from that list. Using remote-aware tools, I can use a "master" Squeak system as the user interface for a headless remote "slave" Squeak system. Also, both the master and slave systems are relatively small (master is 500k, slave is 300k). Both are getting smaller as I remove more things. -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

2 1

more progress... compiler installation suggestions requested
by Craig Latta 14 May '03

14 May '03

Hi-- Currently I'm at 388K bytes, with 122 classes and 10,773 objects. Twenty of the remaining classes are for compilation. Forty percent of total space is taken up by instances of CompiledMethod. What do folks suggest as the best way of getting compilation support back into the system after it has been removed? thanks, -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

3 3

re: other questions
by Craig Latta 04 May '03

04 May '03

Hi Johannes-- > I'm working on distributing a Squeak version and also have problems > with the existing ORBs I've found, and the ones I've managed to > create myself. I want to get complete forwarding, and don't really > know how to do it. Is your proxy class available somewhere... I haven't released it yet. I'd like to release it as part of Squat; the first "real" milestone I have planned is shipping a small system into which Flow may be installed. > ...or can I get some ideas of how to write something similar? It works by changing how the interpreter does message lookup, and using a simple network protocol for remote message-sending. > I've also been thinking on moving down the distribution functionality > to a lower level later on in my project, maybe by managing it with the > object table and have special table references point to a link and > forward things from there to remote objects. What do you think of > that? Could it work or is it complete lunacy? It could work, but I prefer the simpler approach of just modifying message lookup. By changing a very small part of the system, you can "fake out" the rest of the system. :) -C -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

2 1

squat?
by Johannes Jansson 04 Apr '03

04 Apr '03

Hello! I read a mail to the Squeak list a couple of days ago from Craig Latta about the developement of Squat. It sounded very interesting and seemed to incorporate much of the things I'm trying to work on with Squeak. Note trying, I'm still a beginner on smalltalk but doing my best. I'm working on a project to use Squeak for robot and embedded devices programming, and need to make Squeak parallel and distributed, and small. I've been doing some progress and also been looking into stuff like Actalk and rST, but they doesn't really work the way I need. I've been searching around for information about Squat and Flow but could not find so much. In fact nothing. Is there some information about your work? Is Squat available? What is it? Regards Johannes!

2 1

Squat progress, 26 March 2003
by Craig Latta 27 Mar '03

27 Mar '03

(Squat mailing list details at http://netjam.org/squat ) Hi-- In my last update, I mentioned that I had installed a minimal version of Flow into a small (600k) snapshot. I am now communicating with that snapshot from a normal one, via sockets. I have also implemented a minimal remote message-sending facility (AKA an "ORB"), so that I can send messages from the normal system to the small one via proxies, with complete transparency. (I didn't use one of the extant ORBs for various technical reasons, see postscript below.) I'm using the remote-sending facility to direct the further shrinking of the small snapshot from the normal one. This way, it's very straightforward to shut down the human interface, for example. I'll probably do some final cleanup with the simulator (I've added support for making snapshots, along with a few other utilities; among other things, I've made a small snapshot with the GUI ripped out via simulation). I also plan to use remote-sending to build up snapshots from the minimal one. thanks, -C p.s. None of the Squeak ORBs I looked at (Diego Gomez Deck's rST, Xu Wang's S2S, John Fabry's RMP, Peter Smet's FlyByWire, Masashi Umezawa's SOAPOpera, Lex Spoon's RemoteObject framework) were quite the right thing for what I'm doing. Generally, they didn't provide complete forwarding coverage. What I've done forwards absolutely everything, even messages normally handled by the virtual machine, or resolved in the method cache (the proxy class I've made won't even compile messages sent to self in instance methods :). I don't use >>doesNotUnderstand: (in fact, that would get forwarded :), and the proxy class can be inserted anywhere in the class hierarchy. It's also decently fast, and simple. -- Craig Latta http://netjam.org/resume craig(a)netjam.org

1 0

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

Spoon