[Vm-dev] Squeak Port for Android: Update

[Phil (list)]

On Jun 28, 2011, at 1:35 PM, Dimitry Golubovsky wrote:

> Phil,
> 
> Phil wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for your efforts on this, working quite nicely (at least for the image I can get to run :-) on my Honeycomb tablet.  One question I do have: are you aware of any changes
>> that need to be made to or things to watch out for when running other images?  I've tried about half a dozen images (pre- and post-Cog) but they all hang while loading resulting
>> in a force close.  However, the image you provided based on the earlier work of Andreas, works as expected.
> 
> Thanks for the update. Can you post the tiny benchmark result as in
> http://code.google.com/p/squeakvm-tablet/wiki/TinyBenchmark so I could
> add it to the table?
> 

Sure... 37,058,482 bytecodes/sec, 1,205,854 sends/sec on an Acer Iconia (Android 3.0.1, dual core 1GHz Tegra 2 though obviously only one core is being used by the VM)

> It is good to hear that Android 3 can run it. I am not sure what can
> be done with newer images: I tried some as well and got same results
> (program hangs). Keep in mind that this is 3.9 VM.
> 

Bummer, but that makes sense.

>> Also an FYI if you weren't already aware: the recently released NDKr5c appears to have finally addressed the issue that prevented building with the latest NDK.
> 
> I am trying to find time to play with recent Pharo, VMmaker and Cog
> (Mariano Peck has a good review of the VM internals in his blog which
> I am going to use as reference material) to do the same trick of
> "turning the event loop inside out" as Andreas did to the classic VM
> used in this port, and then to use ndk5, newer images, better platform
> code management, etc. This may result in a more universal embeddable
> Squeak VM.
> 

That's good to know.  I'll keep an eye on the mailing list for any new developments as well as doing a little poking around and post anything I come up with as well (though I'm not likely to be of much help on the VM side as my focus is more on dealing with Android these days)

> I think that whatever was done with the original port has shown that
> Squeak may be used on Android tablets pretty well. Next step is to get
> in sync with the current VM sources.

I agree, a common and current VM codebase should be the goal.

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -- 
> Dimitry Golubovsky
> 
> Anywhere on the Web

Thanks again,
Phil