On Fri, Aug 10, 2001 at 10:41:54AM -0400, Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> > 1) The Jitter.
> > This is a Just-In-Time Compiler for Squeak. This speeds up Squeak
> > by generating native machine code on the fly instead of interpreting
> > squeak bytecode...
> 
> > http://irafs1.ira.uka.de/~marcus/j3/
> 
> Are you planning to merge this code with Andreas Raab's source tree for x86?
> 
> > 2) Slang-To-Native code Compiler
> 
> > This was done as part of the mythical (and long gone) Interval Squeak.
> > The idea was to build a new Slang Compiler that could generate not
> > only C-Code, but native machine code for the target plattform. Then
> > they added the possiblility to execute the code at runtime, without
> > restarting the VM. (To add new drivers, etc).
> 
> > The code is available, but hasn´t beed used or maintained for some
> > time. Only ARM is supportet.
> > (Don´t have an URL for this, but I have the code somewhere... I think
> > this is available at Tim Rowledge´s site).
> 
> I don't see it on Tim Rowledge's site.  Could this code be lifted into the
> J3 tree to provide ARM Jitter?

Here's an idea (probably blindingly obvious to some).  Why not go with the flow of 
the Interval work (assuming it is not IP-encumbered), and merge in some of the
J3 work (especially the platform-dependent stuff).  Then, reimplement J3 in Slang
(I have no idea how hard this would be; I haven't programmed enough Slang to 
compare it to C++).  

End result: generate a JIT VM executable for any platform that can be targeted by
the native code generators... from within Squeak.

Tim, was something like this in the long term (heh) vision of the Interval project?

Joshua


> 
> 	--- Noel
> 
>