Hi Lawson.
To see what kind of VM you are running click "Help -> About This System-> VM General"
My Stack Interpreter build shows: Croquet Closure Stack VM [StackInterpreter VMMaker.oscog-tty.661] My Cog32 build shows: Croquet Closure Cog VM [CoInterpreter VMMaker.oscog-eem.670] My Standard Interpreter 64 shows: Squeak4.5 of 19 February 2014 [latest update: #13680]
>>So, the question is: how does one create the old school Squeak >>distribution of source/image/chages files + a VM application?
It depends on the VM and the coder. The old Standard Interpreter is the easiest to work with due to it's cmake system. I documented my experiences with it on my blog. There are several configurations of VMxImage size (32x32, 32/64, 64/32, 64/64) I documented 3 of those. one is here: http://timmydosmalltalk.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/howto-build-a-64-native-sta... It is (the standard intepreter build system, not my notes) a very good starting point for stepping up to the Stack and Cog build systems.
The StackInterpreter and Cog build differently. Both are currently only in 32/32 (32 bit VM powering a 32 bit Image)
For these, you generate the c-source code from VMMaker.oscog (or download from either SVN or Jenkins build server) Configure the mvm wrapper scripts for your platform with appropriate compiler flags and run it.
My current project is to port the existing build scripts from GNU-Make to CMake--
Please feel free to email me directly .
I am also on irc.freenode.net #squeak as tty
Cordially,
tty