[Vm-dev] VM Recipe: How to build an interpreter VM on Linux

[David T. Lewis]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 07:54:39AM +0200, Tobias Pape wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 13.04.2015, at 04:57, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > How to build an interpreter VM from source on a typical Linux or Unix system:
> > 
> > Install development tools for your Linux system (32-bit libraries are not required).
> > 
> > Install CMake, either from your Linux distribution or from www.cmake.org
> > 
> > Install Subversion, either from your Linux distributiion or from
> > https://subversion.apache.org/
> > 
> > Make a new, empty, directory for your work.
> > 
> > In that directory, download the full platforms sources from the Subversion
> > repository. Download everything, whether you need it or not. The Subversion
> > directory information will be used in the build process, so do not cut
> > corners to save space.
> > 
> >  $ svn co http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/trunk/platforms
> > 
> > Also in the new directory, download the generated sources. This is an up to
> > date copy of source files generated from the Smalltalk source code in VMMaker.
> > You can generate them yourself by loading VMMaker, but using the files from
> > the Subversion repository is a faster way to get started.
> > 
> >  $ svn co http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak/trunk/src
> > 
> > You will now have ./platforms and ./src directories with the latest source
> > code for the VM. Make another subdirectory called ./build that you will
> > use to build the VM.
> > 
> >  $ mkdir build
> > 
> > Change to the build directory.
> > 
> >  $ cd build
> > 
> > Copy the example Makefile into your build directory.
> > 
> >  $ cp ../platforms/unix/cmake/Makefile.example Makefile
> > 
> > Build the VM
> > 
> >  $ make
> > 
> 
> Hang on, I thought this was all CMake now.
> Wouldn't I just do
> 
> cmake .. # or ccmake for that matter
> make
> # and so on

It is all CMake. I just added a makefile to drive the overall process.

The CMake build process is described in platforms/unix/README.CMake



> 
> > Install the VM
> > 
> >  $ sudo make install
> > 
> > You now have a VM that runs that classic Squeak image formats, including
> > the 64-bit version (see http://build.squeak.org/job/Squeak%2064-bit%20image/).
> 
> This runs _both_ 32 bit  images and 64 bit images?
> Nice!
> 

Yes, this builds the executables for those image types (but not Spur of course).
The /usr/local/bin/squeak script selects the correct executable based on image
format number. If you look in your /usr/local/lib/squeak/ directory, you will
see one subdirectory for the 32-bit images, and another subdirectory
called <version>_64bit for running 64-bit images. From the user point of view,
it looks like a single VM.

Dave

> 
> > 
> > This is a traditional context interpreter VM. It will not run the latest
> > high performance Spur image formats. Please refer to the Cog and Spur VM
> > development at http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/ and
> > http://www.mirandabanda.org/files/Cog/VM/ for the latest Cog and Spur
> > VM development, and for VMs that support the new Spur image formats.
> > 
> > Dave
>