Michael Rueger wrote:

> Doug Way wrote:
>
>> Or, we could use the occasion of having 4.0 be the next release to go 
>> for whatever VM overhaul needs to be done (if any), and have the 
>> image format change in this next release.
>

I've been looking at the VM for the last few days and I would definitely 
like to see the following changes:

1. primitive "add" is coded very differently from "primitiveBitOr" and 
friends...
Furthermore, it seems that the current coding of BitOr (and friends) 
will cause it to fail unnecessairly on smallInts when the sign bit 
happens to be set... My proposal is to do as I am trying to do right now 
and make the coding of all functions as consistient as possible.

2. A major overhaul that seems to be in order is the separation of 
interpreter from the ObjectMemory heirarchy. The motovation of this 
major refactoring is to begin to lay the groundwork for a move towards 
supporting SMP/hyperthreading. (yes I know this is one of my "special 
interests" ;)

To prepare for this step, interpreter changes should focus on 
simplifying the class variables and remove the ones that are, infact, 
obsolete. (some will be reported to be obsolete by Browser but aren't 
while others are only assigned a value somewhere that is never used 
while others are constants which, perhaps, should be implemented as 
class methods as is done with the components of the Sokoban package.


Since I am now finally competent enough to begin to address these I also 
volunteer to do much of the grunt work. Compile jobs are very fast on my 
SMP machine anyway. ;)