On 28 December 2010 11:19, Yoshiki Ohshima yoshiki@vpri.org wrote:
Hi,
We've been playing with John's MicroSqueak and it occured to me that having a bytecode compiler that is implemented outside of Squeak opens some possibilities, such as generate a growable image file from all text files, or make deep changes to the system without shooting yourself.
I wrote a longer explanation so if you are interested, please go to:
https://github.com/yoshikiohshima/SqueakBootstrapper
and check it out.
Been there did that :) Implementing ST compiler in C is not very hard, since syntax is extremely simple (comparing to C). But the thing is that now you need to keep image-side compiler and C compiler in sync. And very soon you will figure out, that while its extermely easy to extend ST compiler in ST, its very hard to do that in C (see things like Helvetia by Lukas Renggli etc).
What i like about image-side compiler that i can use the metaprogramming and late-binding capabilities in language for compiling the source. While C compiler having no such flexibility, and good to have when you plan to freeze things for ages.
That's why i prefer to implement bootstrap in smalltalk. Because it really doesn't matters , in which language you implementing a bootstrap..
Sorry, if my comment was discouraging. But i had to say it :)
Thank you!
-- Yoshiki