[Vm-dev] How to build a standard Unix interpreter VM on Linux using a Squeak trunk image

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Sun Nov 20 01:36:26 UTC 2011


On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 01:01:55PM -0800, Casey Ransberger wrote:
> 
> This is great!
> 
> I had a thought: There's probably a subset of this information which applies to all platforms. 
> 
> It'd be awfully cool, and I think quite fitting, to have that information in the help system. 
> 
> What do folks think about that?

Yes, you are right in principle. But I think it is important to recognize
that we are in a period of active VM development on the Cog front. My
recipe for building a VM is intended to document the process from the
point of view of an individual person building a traditional VM from
"first principles" on a specific operating system (Linux). There are
other variations on the VM (notably Cog) and other build procedures
(e.g. the VMMaker used for the oscog branch bypasses the interactive
VMMakerTool and generates a common set of generated source code,
independent of operating system, which may be more appropriate in a
professional development environment as opposed to an individual
Squeak user). In addition, Igor is actively developing platform-independent
build processes backed by an automated build environment (Jenkins/Hudson).

For these reasons, I think it may be premature to codify any of this
in the help system for Squeak. But a few more HOWTO recipes to cover
the standard VM on Windows and Mac would be useful, as well as some
equivalent recipes for building Cog VMs on those platforms. I think
that the variations for building these from a Pharo image are
minor, but documenting this would be helpful also.

Dave



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