[Vm-dev] Squeak/Pharo VM fork history

[karl ramberg]

Squeak was made on MacOs 7, 8 or 9 before Apple used Unix.

Best,
Karl

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 11:25 AM K K Subbu <kksubbu.ml at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On 17/05/20 11:33 pm, Jakob Reschke wrote:
> > What remains indisputable is that the CMake build system was not
> > promoted as the official one in the OpenSmalltalk repository. Many
> > of the Squeak folks would also like to use CMake to build...
>
> CMake and autoconf tools are not exclusive. Both will work in the
> typical 'configure && make && make install' sequence.
>
> [I am just jotting down my own recollections below. please correct if I
> am wrong]
>
> Squeak was developed on Darwin (Unix flavor) and then quickly ported to
> other Unix flavors (Solaris, HPUX) and Wintel because of portability of
> both its code and its CMake build scripts. GNU/Linux port appeared only
> around 2005 (2.5?) but quickly dominated over other Unix ports,
> especially when Etoys shipped in OLPC's XO. Its native toolset -
> Autotools - came to be preferred over CMake. Squeak VM continued with
> its CMake build tools in SVN while the newer Open Smalltalk VM moved
> towards GNU toolchain and github.
>
> The choice of build tools affects only the platforms code maintained in
> github and not the VMMaker code. The platform champions get to pick
> their build tools. If there are sufficient supporters for a platform
> port, then its code is likely to evolve sustainably. When supporters
> dwindle, build rot is inevitable. That's life :-(.
>
> So the real question is "Are there enough supporters to make a platform
> fork (either in build tools or OS flavors) viable in the long term?" If
> not, the fork will gets its seven days of fame and then rot slowly.
>
> GNU/Linux and MacOS have a large supporter base, but ports like Solaris,
> FreeBSD may not. So Squeak/Pharo platform fork will affect them much
> more deeply than GNU/Linux or MacOS, particularly when it comes to
> hardware plugins like graphics or sound.
>
> But a bigger risk is that if GNU/Linux starts dominating the ports, then
> Squeak/Pharo will become like other apps in the GNU stack with
> increasing dependencies on GNU toolchain and runtime frameworks. There
> is nothing wrong in building an app. It is just not a virtual personal
> computing system. It is just a balloon descending into its castle ;-).
>
> Regards .. Subbu
>
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