A friend of mine is trying to build Linux VMs in such a way that he can use the parallel port from Squeak with the library mentioned in
http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira/?p=144
He tried following the instructions in
http://www.squeakvm.org/unix/platforms/unix/doc/HowToBuildFromSource.html/Ho...
but the server mentioned there no longer exists. I told him to replace squeak.hpl.hp.com with www.squeakvm.org in the URL and that worked. It would be nice if the page could be fixed since he is trying to create something that can be reproduced by many teachers in Uruguay who a pretty clueless about Squeak, much less about compiling VMs.
Previously he had tried downloading the 3.7-7 sources from the link in http://www.squeakvm.org/unix/ but that doesn't include FFI by default. Patching generated file such as plugins.int didn't help and VMMaker (but the one included in Squeak 3.7 images and the latest one downloaded into a 3.10.2 image) refused to allow FFI to be dragged to either the internal or external plugin lists.
The reason for trying 3.7-7 first instead of the very latest sources is that a change in character input introduced in 3.9-4 makes it incompatible with normal Squeak images (I imagine it works with Etoys images) if your keyboard has any "strange" characters. I just have to press "~" or something like that to get a debugger with new VMs.
-- Jecel
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org