[Vm-dev] Running Alien on Windows

[Andreas Raab]

Hi Torsten -

Thanks for cc-ing vm-dev; I wouldn't have seen this post otherwise. I've 
actually looked at the code since and there's some good news here: It 
appears that there's no actual modification of the Windows support code 
necessary to use Alien. The only difference is a flag in sqWin32Window.c 
which for all intents and purposes appears to be completely unused.

That leaves the question of how to deal with the patches to the VMMaker 
code base. As you know, my "official" VMs are always built from the 
"official" sources (i.e., the latest VMMaker package on 
http://www.squeaksource.com/VMMaker.html) and if you'd like to help 
getting Alien support into the standard builds we should figure out how 
to integrate these patches.

Perhaps David and/or Eliot can help? From my perspective this issue 
doesn't really belong with the Windows VM but rather with the VMMaker 
package. I just build whatever is in there, so if Alien support is in, 
then I'll build it together with everything else.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

On 4/20/2010 10:24 AM, Torsten Bergmann wrote:
>
> Bouraqadi Noury wrote on pharo-dev
>> We have trouble running alien on Windows. Starting from a clean pharo
>> 1.0 image and the latest VM,
>
> Would not work out of the box with the VM since it requires
> VM changes. Marco ported them from Newspeak
> and made them available [1]. Tests went green and
> he is sucessfully using Alien on Windows. But it is not yet
> in the official Squeak VM (which is 4.0.2.).
>
> There is also an issue for pharo [2] and an issue for
> VM developers [3] to follow progress.
>
> So the code is there and is ready for integration.
> Andreas asked for the license [4], Marco answered
> that code was from Newspeak [5].
>
> After that we got a good response from John McIntosh
> on the license issue [6] which should be OK now.
> (Dont know, I'm not a lawyer)
>
> After I asked Andreas again he answered that it is not
> highest priority for him which I understood since
> Squeak 4.1 was in preparation. See last response
> regarding this [7]
>
> Dont know what should be the next steps to get Alien
> into the Win32-VM code base. Maybe Andreas could tell
> you more.
>
> As a workaround you could use the source provided
> by Marco to build your own unofficial VM - however
> you would have to reintegrate anytime Andreas makes
> a new release...
>
> Bye
> T.
>
> [1] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2010-March/003983.html
> [2] http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=1360
> [3] http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=7475
> [4] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2010-March/004034.html
> [5] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2010-March/004037.html
> [6] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2010-March/004054.html
> [7] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2010-
> March/004103.html
>