On Mar 10, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

> Brian Rice wrote:
>> Obligatory rejoinder: There's plenty of room for improvement in  
>> helping Squeakers create a porting branch of the Squeak VM and in  
>> maintaining such a branch with the least effort in concert with  
>> main-line Squeak updates. Hosting such projects at an official  
>> Squeak site like squeakvm.org would also be an improvement.
>
> Which, if you start a new platform branch instead of trying to  
> patch existing ones, shouldn't be a problem I think.

This sounds promising, but most of us with interest in handhelds  
aren't experienced (Squeak) VM hackers, and are not aware of the  
process involved, especially if we are making relatively slight  
tweaks to a mature branch, like the Unix branch for the Zaurus PDA or  
Nokia internet tablets. In a lot of these cases, it's a configuration  
issue, and the way to make a platform branch that is maintainable is  
not clear. Most of the existing ports are currently just tarballs of  
some modified snapshot of the VM sources from a while ago, so it  
seems like people have found it easiest so far to just hack until it  
worked and then archive for posterity.

As a non-handheld, but practical example, there have been (mostly- 
working, but now no longer on the 'net) BeOS ports of some versions  
of the VM, but it's never gotten to the point where those ports met  
the main repositories. That's an example of a port whose solution  
might tell the solver what documentation needs to be available to  
complete other such ports. Making one solution tractable would make  
the solution of the handheld problems nearly as tractable.

Another thing occurs to me: one of the factors that makes  
coordinating Squeak VM development for PDAs is that there are many  
toolchains (even if gcc-based) for these different systems, and some  
are proprietary (MSVC), so no one person will likely be able to  
understand or vet all the ports (especially Ian or you, who have many  
things on your plates).

So, here are the questions that occur to me:

- Is there a guide for how to do this?
- If you do find it easy enough to explain in an email, how can we  
put it on an official Squeak site where it is likely to be found?  
(The wiki is great, or a README in the SVN tree, but there should at  
least be a link from squeakvm.org's page or something.)
- What is the recommended process for submitting patches for such a  
branch when the level of interaction isn't high enough to merit  
asking for write access to the SVN server?
- If a permanent account to the SVN server is justified, how does one  
make that request?

This kind of information should be published in an obvious place  
rather than repeated on email.

--
-Brian
http://briantrice.com

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