Sarkela <sarkela at home.com> is widely believed to have written:


> Other projects might be,
[snip]
>     VM building

Ta-Da! It's here!

OK, for 2.8 (ie the release upon which StableSqueak is built) there is
now a beta release of the VMMaker on my website. I have provided three
components:-
the basic Squeak code
(http://sumeru.stanford.EDU/tim/pooters/SqFiles/deltas/VMMaker2-8.zip)
the RiscOS platform tree
(http://sumeru.stanford.EDU/tim/pooters/SqFiles/deltas/VMMaker2-8-platRiscOS.zip )
and the unix platform tree
(http://sumeru.stanford.EDU/tim/pooters/SqFiles/deltas/VMMaker2-8-platUnix.tgz )

The unix tree works ok on my linuxPPC powerbook, but I am convinced
that my modifications to the makefile/configure stuff must resemble
random hacking by mutant monkeys. I do _not_ claim any proper competence
in that area, but it does work for me.

Hopefully the two exemplar trees will illustrate what is needed for Mac
& Windows, Be, OS/2, Amiga, etc. The RiscOS tree shows how I handle the
building on a platform that has no analogue of autoconf, which is
probably similar to the case for Macs and Windows.

There are areas still to be completed before it is truly a push-button
tool. For one, there is no button to push! We need to decide on a way to
work out the list of buildable plugins at runtime; at the moment I have
deferred to a manually made list. I would like to see if it is worth
having platform specific subclasses of the VMMaker that can build
the makefiles; after all the VMMaker knows what plugins it is assembling
and really ought to be able to do much of the job.

There is one really big bug that gets in the way right now. Copying a
file from one directory to another is not supported at all by the normal
Squeak image. I added a very simplistic facility for this in the
VMMaker, deliberately an awkward place to remind us to fix the terrible
File handling.  Unfortunately, it still doesn't deal with a crucial
aspect of file copying - the permissions/typing of the file. Thus if you
try the linux version you will have to manually reset the permissions of
the assorted script files that get copied to src/ and src/util before
anything works.

I propose to make a simple ExtendedFilePlugin to attempt to work around
this on a temporary basis, just to make copying something that can be
deferred to the platform. Unless of course, somebody else has found a
solution for this already...


A version for 3.1alpha is coming very soon, hopefully today.

tim

-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Trojan:  Storage device for replicating codes...