contemplating a VM fork.

[Alan Grimes]

Hello, I am contemplating forking the VM due to my frustration over
having to live at Ian's mercy with regards to enhancements to the VM.  I
don't mean to fault Ian, he has clearly done some excellant work with
Squeak and is superbly talented. My issue is that I am unable to work
with his build environment to the point that I can successfully
implement my own extensions such as the SDL driver that I've been
working on. -- I can't figure out how to make the build script work.

I am therefore contemplating an attempt to fork a new set of platform
code that I can work with. I don't expect the quality of my code will be
able to equal that of Ian's in terms of compatibility, only that it will
be better suited to my skillset. -- A version that I can change quickly,
easily, and with impunity.

In researching this effort I came across an extremely interesting bit of
code in my Croquet image:

#######
glActiveTextureARB(texture)
    "This method was automatically generated."

### By what software???

    "void glActiveTextureARB(GLenum texture);"
    <apicall: void 'glActiveTextureARB' (ulong) module: 'opengl32.dll'>

### An initial investigation seems to indicate that this is accomplished
through the "FFI" plugin. How does this really work???
If it's even 1/10th as powerful as it appears to be, most of the
existing platform and cross code should be scrapped in favor of in-image
wrappers! =P
####

    ^self externalCallFailed
########