[Vm-dev] [CRAZY IDEA] "Breakpoints" in the VM from SLANG

[David T. Lewis]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 05:50:56PM +0200, Mariano Martinez Peck wrote:
>  
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 2:04 PM, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 01:40:22PM +0200, Mariano Martinez Peck wrote:
> > >
> > > So...I need to go to C, and "translate in my mind" what that part of
> > SLANG
> > > should look like in C, and search it in the C code. XCode is FAAAR to
> > slow
> > > to browe the interp.c . Morever, with inlined methods it is even more
> > > difficult to find...
> >
> > XCode might be slow, but Squeak is fast :) Have a look at SlangBrowser
> > for this. It has not been updated for either Pharo or oscog, but if
> > anyone is interested maybe we can get that working too. Source is in
> > the SqueakSource VMMaker project, and info at:
> >
> >  http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5916
> >
> 
> 
> Thanks Dave. I wasn't aware of what SlangBrowser was...I always saw it in
> the VMMaker repo but I didn't know what it was until today. Cool project. I
> really like the idea.
> It would be awesome to extendt it so that it can not only supports
> ObjectMemory/Interpreter/Plugins  but also CompiledMethods of those classes
> :)
> 
> For example,  (Interpreter >>#lookupInMethodCacheSel:class:)  asCString
> that would be lovely :)

Try this:

  Transcript
    open;
    clear;
    show: (Interpreter asCString: #lookupInMethodCacheSel:class:)

> Just for the record (if you want to include it in the wiki), in order to
> make it work (the asCString) I needed to first load MemoryAccess because it
> is used in VMMaker class >>cCodeGenerator: aClass inCache: cache inlined:
> doInlining
> 
> You can...or document that on the wiki or maybe add a Smalltalk at:   ?
> 

Oops that's a bug, thanks.

> Anyway, how much effort do you think it could be to adapt at least the
> asCString to the new Cog versions ?    because this is a nice feature for
> when you are learning
> 

It should not be too hard. It's just a matter of creating the CCodeGenerator
for any given class in the same way that VMMaker would have done, and using
it to generate the code into strings that you can browse in the image and/or
display in the browser code pane.

Dave