[Vm-dev] Re: [Pharo-dev] The Second Coming of Java article

Tue Nov 26 21:30:40 UTC 2013

On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 12:49 PM, phil at highoctane.be <phil at highoctane.be>wrote:

> FWIW, I'd love to have a working Pharo bytecode interpreter that works.
> VMMaker currently doesn't have one it seems (earlier experiments didn't
> worked for me).
>
> I am very interested with the VM, read the blue book, understand the
> primitives, can somewhat read bytecode but what is needed now is the
> ability to run/debug a VM inside Pharo itself. GDB'ing is okay but a pain
> in the ass to understand what's going on.
>
> Also read the Tour of the OE of Tim Rowledge and Porting the VM etc.
>
> Also looked at the VMMaker package (Interpreter and Object Memory) + Slang.
>
> Now, getting an working interpreter would help me reach the next step. I
> am not talking about the Stack interpreter, but the plain Interpreter.
>
> Any plans?
>

David Lewis and I want to see the Cog branch and the VMMaker proper merged
and I definitely want the standard Interpreter to be married to Spur.  But
I have no cycles to do this, and I don't think David has many either.
 Volunteers welcome.

>
> Phil
>
> ---
> Philippe Back
> Dramatic Performance Improvements
> Mob: +32(0) 478 650 140 | Fax: +32 (0) 70 408 027
> Mail:phil at highoctane.be | Web: http://philippeback.eu
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>
> High Octane SPRL
> rue cour Boisacq 101 | 1301 Bierges | Belgium
>
> Pharo Consortium Member - http://consortium.pharo.org/
> Featured on the Software Process and Measurement Cast -
> http://spamcast.libsyn.com
> Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and Ability Engineering EADocX Value
> Added Reseller
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 9:33 PM, Stéphane Ducasse <
> stephane.ducasse at inria.fr> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Nov 26, 2013, at 1:21 PM, phil at highoctane.be wrote:
>>
>> I downloaded ST/X this morning and looked around for a couple hours.
>>
>> Impressive system. And impressive clients list/activities etc.
>> <rant>
>> And wow, Claus is yet another individual with top notch computer chops...
>> Seems that this community has the highest density of high perf brains. I
>> feel humbled indeed.
>> </rant>
>>
>> What struck me was the speed.
>>
>>
>> 15 years of working improving the VM pays off.
>> This is why the work of Eliot on Spur are also important. What is also
>> important is that more people can work on the VM
>> for cleaning it so that we get a documented and good vehicule.
>> And this will take time. We are working on a prototype to get forced to
>> think about VM and learn. But this prototype will
>> not replace Cog in the near future. So we should be happy that cog is
>> there and improving.
>>
>> Stef
>>
>> Pharo really needs a huge speedup on the UI front. I am using a top of
>> the line desktop system and still Pharo sometimes feels slow (some is due
>> to algorithms - like the finder tool taking ages for a lot of things, but
>> some is due to the UI system).
>>
>> This is not linked to the VM, as the MVC projects in Squeak are uber fast.
>>
>> Is the Text rewrite going to have an impact on this?
>>
>> On the front of interoperability, I personally have chosen to go the
>> RabbitMQ route, it allows me to wire all kinds of things together with some
>> room for scale.
>>
>> On the Java front itself, in the TCL community, we do have tclbend and
>> also a package to do the same thing as STX:LIBJAVA. Truth be told, there
>> hasn't been much traction in there. It works fine but that's it.
>> http://www2.tcl.tk/1313 - usage sample http://www2.tcl.tk/14919
>> It also has fell behind in terms of keeping up with the latest versions
>> of the environment.
>>
>> In PHP, there is the Quercus and Caucho Resin Server that allows to run
>> PHP on top of the JVM and invoke Java from there. Some people run very fast
>> stuff on that, and benefiting from all JEE abilities (JMS, JTA, Clustering,
>> JAAS...) is really nice.  http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.1/doc/quercus.xtp
>>
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 12:26 PM, Jan Vrany <jan.vrany at fit.cvut.cz>wrote:
>>
>>> On 26/11/13 10:40, Serge Stinckwich wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Jan Vrany <jan.vrany at fit.cvut.cz>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 26/11/13 03:28, askoh wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bravo Jan and your collaborators. You have done it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Anything preventing STX:LIBJAVA from being used in production
>>>>>> environments?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Good question. STX:LIBJAVA is still a research phase. However, if
>>>>> everything
>>>>> goes fine, we might have first project using it for real
>>>>> in couple months.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> What is important is also the licence. Do you use an open-source
>>>> licence ?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Strictly speaking - no. For various, historical reasons.
>>>
>>> The Smalltalk part STX:LIBJAVA support code is available under
>>> the same terms as Smalltalk/X itself [1].
>>>
>>> The code of the VM is not publicly available for various reasons,
>>> though it is possible to get an access. Ask Claus Gittinger if
>>> you're interested in details.
>>>
>>>
>>>>  Anything preventing Pharo and VisualWorks for using the technology
>>>>>> also?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  Short answer: Time and money.
>>>>> The way we did it requires significant changes to the virtual machine
>>>>> (as we believe this is the only way to get a decent performance).
>>>>> Indeed, if
>>>>> somebody going to pay for it, everything's possible ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> You should try to ask ESUG about financial support.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Maybe I should. But frankly - how many people in this community are like
>>> "That would be great, I need this feature!" Raise hands. :-)
>>>
>>> Cheers, Jan
>>>
>>> [1] http://www.exept.de/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/stx/README?view=markup
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
best,
Eliot
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