[Vm-beginners] last furlong

[Chris Cunnington]

That was a great tour through the pieces. I can see how the Slang 
becomes the actual C code.

The difference between sq.h and gnu-interp.c is the letter "u", as 
mentioned in that great post. I suppose, though, that's not really the 
problem, and my playing with C files or Slang methods I don't understand 
will be unproductive.

I took sources from squeakvm.org and compiled them successfully using 
Adrian's blog. No problem. I started an image with that vm.

Then I started to play with the VMMaker and a taint in the process was 
introduced. The only way I could imagine introducing a taint was in 
putting in/leaving out a plugin contrary to the arrangement Adrian 
specified. But that's not the problem, because I've seen plugins 
compiled that weren't supposed to be and such.

The problem is the VMMaker itself, I suppose. It's not generic. It's 
keyed - unwittingly, it seems - to specific sets of source files. And so 
we have drift that can't be accounted for in Adrian's blog. All the 
pieces of this process are like stars that keep moving and you can only 
take a picture of a certain period in time.

It's this drift that drove Igor to write NativeBoost, I'd guess. When he 
writes code with NativeBoost he knows that the image, vm, and plugins 
may all drift, but the memory won't, so he doesn't have to recompile 
every time something changes.

The logical question to ask the VMMaker is "What versions are you good 
for, O VMMaker?" which - I'm willing to bet - is not a question it can 
readily answer.

I'll read the last paragraph sometime in the future. :)

Chris
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