[Vm-dev] Best and latest VMs for Open Cobalt release?

[Andreas Raab]

ed.boyce at duke.edu wrote:
>   Thanks Andreas. So I gather from your response and John McIntosh's that
> Windows 3.10-4 and Mac 3.8.21beta are approximately equivalent versions?

Yes.

> And I have one not-so-off-topic question: Why are the VM version
> numbers/schemes allowed to diverge like this across platforms? 

Because this is open source and I don't get to tell John how he names 
his VMs. Do I think it's good? No, I think it's horrible. But unless I 
start making Macintosh VM packages, I don't get to decide how John names 
his VMs.

> Particularly for users who want assurances that SmallTalk
> code will execute identically across platforms, this 
> is confusing and not reassuring.

Yes. I agree to 100%. Which is why I have generally named "my" VMs in 
sync with the image releases to make it reasonably understandable for 
people that for running a 3.10 image they should consider a 3.10 VM. 
(Coincidentally, this is why the Croquet VM is labeled 1.0 too).

Cheers,
   - Andreas

> 
>   Thanks again for all insights.
> 
>        -- Ed
> 
>>>    Looking at http://squeak.org/Download/ and http://squeakvm.org, I 
>>> see various
>>> latest version #'s available for the different platforms.  One 
>>> possible course
>>> of action I could take is do fresh builds on each platform from the 
>>> current
>>> subversion sources.  But before go through that exercise, I would 
>>> like to ask
>>> the knowledgeable members of this list:
>>>
>>>     1) What is the latest STABLE version of the Squeak VM that is 
>>> available for
>>> all three major platforms?
>>
>> On Windows it's 3.10.4.
>>
>>>     2) Is there any reason anyone can think of that this latest 
>>> version would
>>> not be suitable and stable for Open Cobalt's alpha debut? This would 
>>> include
>>> performance issues. If so, what is the most recent VM that would be 
>>> suitable
>>> and stable?
>>
>> All of the recent VMs should be fine. Do note however, that due to the 
>> bit-identical replication requirements of Croquet you'll want to run 
>> the CroquetVMTests to ensure that everything comes out as expected.
>>
>>>     3) We would like to expand the number of platforms that Cobalt is 
>>> available
>>> on.  Does anyone know of Squeak VM builds on platforms such as 
>>> Solaris and
>>> FreeBSD that have the functioning openAL and openGL bindings 
>>> necessary for
>>> Cobalt?
>>
>> Can't help you here.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>   - Andreas
>>
> 
> 
>