[squeak-dev] Linux VM packages (was: Squeak Oversight Board minutes ? 10/18/11)

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Thu Oct 20 00:25:13 UTC 2011


On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 04:49:33PM -0300, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
> 
> There are two different use cases we are interested in handling. The
> first is making things nicer in the future for Linux users. That can be
> done with new or changed code on both the image side and the VM
> packages. The second use case, which the survey will be for, is making
> the 4.3 image usable for users who got their current VMs from their
> distribution instead of from squeak.org. In this situation we can't make
> any modifications to the VM since these won't get included in all
> distributions soon enough to help.
> 
> Of course, we have to be reasonable. I am stuck in Fedora 10, for
> example (their installation system can deal with RAID in the root
> partition, but their upgrade system can't). And during a long time I was
> stuck with a 3.7-7 VM because newer ones broke diacritical marks for all
> but the Etoys images. It wouldn't make any sense to try to support
> someone in that situation. That has been fixed and I now use a
> 4.0.3-2202 VM. Using that with a proposed 4.3 image gets me
> 
> + exec padsp /usr/local/lib/squeak/4.0.3-2202/squeakvm
> Squeak4.3alpha-11636.image
> This interpreter (vers. 6502) cannot read image file (vers. 6505).

To check my understanding, you are using the 4.0.3-2202 because you
are stuck on an older Linux version, and the newer VMs do not run on
that older platform due to runtime library differences on the older
Linux system that you use versus the newer Linux system on which the
VM was compiled. Is that right?

For reference:

The 4.0.3-2202 VM cannot read a Cog (6505) image. Any VM labeled 4.3.3-xxxx
or newer has the ability to read this image format (where the "4.3.3" part
refers to VMMaker version, and "xxxx" is version level of the associated
platform support code).

The current released VM version for Unix/Linux on http://www.squeakvm.org/unix/
is 4.4.7-2357, and this is the version in the Squeak 4.2 All-in-one
link on squeak.org. If we still have links pointing users to the old
4.0.3-2202 VM, that is probably something that should be fixed.

All versions of Cog and StackVM from Eliot or Igor support the 6505
image format, and any image saved from any of these VMs is fully
functional on any of the others.

Dave




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