On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 02:22:32PM -0700, Ken Causey wrote:
Matthew on #squeak was having trouble with FFI on Ubuntu so I thought I would give it a try on my Debian Testing system. I should note that I am on X86_64 while Matthew is on i386/i686. I think Matthew will follow up with details about his experience.
First I've not been Squeaking much in some time so all I have handy on my current development system is a 4.2-all-in-one in case I want to help answer a #squeak question. So I started out using this image and VM. The image is the stock 4.2 image unmodified.
I added 'source.squeak.org/FFI' to Monticello and installed
http://source.squeak.org/FFI/FFI-Pools-eem.3.mcz http://source.squeak.org/FFI/FFI-Kernel-mtf.23.mcz http://source.squeak.org/FFI/FFI-Examples-ar.1.mcz http://source.squeak.org/FFI/FFI-Tests-jcg.4.mcz http://source.squeak.org/FFI/FFI-Unix-mtf.4.mcz
in that order.
In this configuration if I run the tests I get 1 success, 1 failure, and 21 errors. In the process I also tried earlier -ar versions of the packages with much the same result.
Watching with strace it appears it is unable to find the ffiTest* symbols in the supplied so.SqueakFFIPrims and if I look at it with objdump they do not appear to be there. Note that this file is only 23572 bytes in size.
Next I tried building 4.4.7-2357 (the latest Unix VM and the same distributed in the all-in-one) myself. After a few fumbles I got that build with an FFI plugin but when I try the tests with that build the image immediately crashes:
"Segmentation fault
24014104 ExternalFunction>invokeWith:with:with:with: 24011904 FFIPluginTests>testConstructedCharCall 24011812 TestCase>performTest 24011708 TestCase>runCase 24011616 BlockClosure>on:do: 24011524 TestCase>timeout:after: 24011432 BlockClosure>ensure: ...."
Since you are on X86_64, make sure that you are compiling your VM in 32-bit mode (-m32 compiler flag). FFI does not work on 64-bit platforms, details at http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=7237.
FYI, this can definitely be fixed (the patches were done a few years ago), but I would frankly be reluctant to try taking it on right now because it is a complex set of changes that must be coordinated in the platform support code, slang, and images, and there are quite a lot of other things going on with VMs these days, including Eliot's work on a new FFI.
The status of the 64-bit fixes and testing as of May 2008 is in the thread at http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2008-May/001945.html
Dave
I can provide more info if desired. Note that the so.SqueakFFIPrims with my own build is 38353 bytes in size and I can confirm it has the ffiTest* symbols. I have not as of yet tested this with strace.
As part of the process I also tried cog 2382 and it works just fine, all the tests pass. I simply downloaded the linux binary tgz, extracted it, and ran it in place with the very same 4.2 stock image. Oh, and cog's SqueakFFIPrims is 260838 in bytes. Totally different implementation?
Note that in all cases I repeated the entire process of installing the FFI packages manually.
Ken