Vm-dev March 2011

vm-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

43 participants
133 discussions

ffi-test-main.c fails on FreeBSD
by Gary Dunn 12 Aug '16

12 Aug '16

In conjunction with getting Open Cobalt running on FreeBSD I have been looking into the problems with SqueakFFIPrims on FreeBSD and have reached a point that is beyond my understanding. I am not sure if the fix should come from the VM side or the FreeBSD port maintainer. I needed to get source code back into the ports tree so I did a make in /usr/ports/lang/squeak. I already had the 3.9 tarball, so that just repopulated the source and did the initial build. In the "files" folder I found patch files typical for a FreeBSD port. These patch source files from a generic tarball to work with FreeBSD. The one of interest was patch-platforms__unix__plugins__SqueakFFIPrims__ffi-config which contains ----x-----x----- --- platforms/unix/plugins/SqueakFFIPrims/ffi-config.org Wed Apr 26 20:27:53 2006 +++ platforms/unix/plugins/SqueakFFIPrims/ffi-config Wed Apr 26 20:29:00 2006 @@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ case ${abi} in linux) abi=sysv;; + freebsd*) abi=sysv;; darwin*) abi=darwin;; *) abi=libffi; lib="-lffi";; esac -----x-----x----- I then had the folder work/Squeak-3.9-7/platforms/unix/plugins/SqueakFFIPrims In it is a file 00README which explains how to test FFI. It says to run ffi-test-config but I have no such file. It says to type "make" to build a test suite but the build failed. It says to try with make CPU=any ABI=libffi LIB=-lffi which also failed. I traced the problem to the gcc search paths for includes and libraries -- turns out FreeBSD only searches /usr/include and /usr/lib when the required files are in /usr/local/include and /usr/local/lib. After some fiddling I finally had a "main" to test. It failed: ffi-test-main.c failed at line 361. Here is a bit from that file, ending with line 361: ffiInitialize(); for (ul= 0; ul < 15; ++ul) ffiPushSingleFloat(fa[ul]); GO(FFITypeSingleFloat, many); f= ffiReturnFloatValue(); ffiCleanup(); CHECK(f - ff < FLT_EPSILON); I worked out the CHECK macro but could not find what FLT_EPSILON is. At that point I decided to stop and come to you for help. Where do I go from here? -- Gary Dunn, Honolulu osp(a)aloha.com http://openslate.net/ http://e9erust.blogspot.com/ Sent from Slate001

5 8

Direct object pointers vs indirect ones pros and cons
by Igor Stasenko 26 Oct '11

26 Oct '11

Hi , all RoarVM using object tables, while Squeak VM using direct pointers for object. This is a basic element of VM design, and i wonder, how much impact it does on overall VM speed. Both variants having own advantages/disadvantages, while i think, that with good JIT an extra indirection could be almost insignificant. But having indirect pointers to objects opens quite sexy perspectives. Being able to freely choose object(s) location means that: - its quite easy to implement object memory paging (swapping between memory and disc), - place particular object(s) into special memory location (good for FFI, object pinning etc) - #become: is O(1), instead of O(heap size) The downside of indirect pointers is, of course, a higher memory traffic, which directly impacts all operations everywhere. What else? I'd like to know, what you thinking about it, and why Squeak VM, in particular, using direct object pointers? What are this choice based on? I'd like to know. Maybe i missing something. -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

10 23

Profiling and delay accuracy
by Andreas Raab 06 Aug '11

06 Aug '11

Hi Folks - For a long time now I had this feeling that MessageTally reports pretty bogus results in many situations without being able to precisely track down why this would be the case. Today I was looking at primitiveResponse() and, much to my surprise, noticed that the checkForInterrupts() that used to be there for years is gone (see Squeak3.6 for example which still has it). The sole reason for this check was to get both high delay accuracy and good profiling behavior. Consider this example: fc := FormCanvas on: Display. MessageTally spyOn:[ 1 to: 100 do:[:i| fc fillColor: Color white. fc printString. ]. ]. Using 3.6 this will be measured correctly as: **Tree** 87.5% {243ms} FormCanvas>>fillColor: |87.5% {243ms} GrafPort>>fillRect:offset: | 87.5% {243ms} GrafPort>>copyBits 12.5% {35ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printString 12.5% {35ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printStringLimitedTo: whereas the 3.10 reports it as **Tree** 99.6% {670ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printString 94.9% {639ms} primitives 4.6% {31ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printStringLimitedTo: I think you can see the problem and just imagine what this does to any cumulative results. I also wonder what that change does to platforms that don't have high-resolution asynchronous timers. This used to be the one place where we would catch timer changes at high resolution and unless the platform forces high resolution timer interrupts asynchronously (by resetting the interrupt counter) we must be loosing a lot in terms of delay accuracy. (it just so happens that the Windows VM *does* do asynchronous timer interrupts so I never noticed this but I'm very curious about the difference on Linux which typically still has pretty bad timer granularity). Any opinions? My feeling is that the timer check should go back in for all of the above reasons. At the very least a quickCheckForInterrupt() is required but I actually think putting the full check back in is worth it. Cheers, - Andreas

3 3

Method executing but not sent to the receiver
by Mariano Martinez Peck 10 Jun '11

10 Jun '11

Hi folks. I need to be able to execute a method with an object but not sending a message to that object. So for example, I've checked Message>>sendTo: or CompiledMethod>>valueWithReceiver:arguments: and both of them are finally sent to the receiver. I need to do something like: (MyClass >>#foo) valueWith: anObject args: args. but I don't want that the primitive is sent to anObject. I would like to be able to send such message to the compiled method, and being the receiver. For example, something like this: CompiledMethod >> valueWithReceiver: aReceiver arguments: anArray "Execute compiledMethod against the receiver and args in argArray. The receiver is the CompiledMethod" <primitive: 666> self primitiveFailed Do you think this is doable ? If true, can you give me any hint ? I took a look to #primitiveExecuteMethod but I cannot figure out how to adapt it. Thanks in advance, Mariano

8 21

4.0.3.2196 for Unix
by Ian Piumarta 08 May '11

08 May '11

Folks, Source and binaries for Linux/i386, Darwin/i386 & Darwin/PPC now available. (Solaris, NetBSD and FreeBSD still at 3.11.3 until I get my kvm working again.) http://squeakvm.org/unix Enjoy! Ian Major changes since 3.11.3.2135: Generated sources rebuilt from VMMaker-dtl.169. Re-enabled MIDI support via ALSA on Linux. Broken locales should no longer cause line ends to go missing during copy and paste. Add support for "platform source version" primitive. Remove debugging beep on first clipboard copy under X11. Allow fully-qualified pathnames when loading modules. Bundle FreetypePlugin with source and binary releases. Various fixes for 64-bit cleanliness (many thanks to Dave Lewis). Add microsecond clock support. Fix launching from a menu under KDE. Fix --CFLAGS option in configure script. Serial plugin invalidates cached port names on close. Better handling of symlinks when looking for absolute path to VM binary.

5 12

Portability problems: compiler flags
by Aleksej Saushev 12 Apr '11

12 Apr '11

Hello! Squeak uses highly unportable flag "-mno-fused-madd". It isn't present in many systems, even those using GCC, since many systems use older compilers. Also, why do you build fdlibm? It is old stuff that works not so well, we have better libm. Is there a way to use our libm? No "-mno-fused-madd" in our compiler. --- unix/plugins/FloatMathPlugin/config.cmake.orig 2011-01-25 04:56:17.000000000 +0300 +++ unix/plugins/FloatMathPlugin/config.cmake 2011-01-25 05:15:59.000000000 +0300 @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ # GCC optimizations break fdlibm so disable them for now. IF (CMAKE_COMPILER_IS_GNUCC) - SET (LIBM_CFLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} -O0 -mno-fused-madd") + SET (LIBM_CFLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS}") ELSE () SET (LIBM_CFLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS}") ENDIF () -- HE CE3OH...

8 14

CMake for Windows
by Mariano Martinez Peck 06 Apr '11

06 Apr '11

Hi Igor. I saw CogMsWindowsConfig but I have a couple of questions: 1) is it working ? 2) how do you use cmake in a windows box ? cygwin ? 3) how are you now compiling the windows vm (in case you are) ? cheers Mariano

2 7

[Pharo-project][Vm-dev] OSS sound plugin.
by Lemuus 06 Apr '11

06 Apr '11

Hi, is it possible to include the vm-sound-OSS sound plugin in the cog build on Hudson?. This is the only plugin that seems to work on linux. Thanks. Daniel Galdames G.

3 3

Problem with alien callbacks
by Javier Pimás 05 Apr '11

05 Apr '11

Hi, we are having a problem with callbacks in alien and we would like to see if we are doing something wrong or if it is a bug in the implementation (for the standard old vm). We are receiving the callback just in the middle of a primitiveExternalCall (actually to a function that will fail because the plugin is not present, but i don't think that's important). We pinned it to occur always in the same line, which is longAtput((lit + (BASE_HEADER_SIZE)) + (2 << (SHIFT_FOR_WORD)), ConstZero); of primitiveExternalCall. When the callback occurs, the thunkEntry is called, which if we understand correctly, saves the active context and runs the interpreter by calling sendInvokeCallbackStackRegistersJmpbuf. The problem is that things like messageSelector and lkupClass, which are global variables are not saved while saving the context, and when the callback returns, the last line of primitiveExternalCall, rewriteMethodCacheSelclassprimIndex(messageSelector, lkupClass, 0); puts a 0 in the wrong place. Also, probably as las message sent was primReturnFromContext:through: (because we just returned from the context), we get a primitiveFailed, but not for the original called function but for primReturnFromContext:through:. What do you think? are we missing something? Regards, Javier. -- Javier Pimás Ciudad de Buenos Aires

3 6

Cannot generate sources without .sources
by Mariano Martinez Peck 04 Apr '11

04 Apr '11

I know that it may sound obvious for most of you, but spent half an hour trying to understand why CogUnixConfig generateWithSources was throwing a "" Then I discovered that I was missing the .sources. I knew that, but I didn't know it was necesary to generate VM sources. So...just for make newbie's like better...can we add a simpler validator in #generateWithSources that checks whether the .surces is present and if not raises a clear error saying "VM source code cannot be generated without .sources file". cheers Mariano

3 7

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

Vm-dev March 2011