64bit squeak VM to run 32bit images? Catalina

 Hi John,

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 09:56:16PM +0000, John M McIntosh wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have a build for making a 64bit squeak VM that runs 32bit images?
> I have one from July 8th 2010.
> Was there any created over the years since? Say pre-cog etc?
> People are migrating to Catalina and discovering they can't access their old images.
>

See attached screen image.

So yes, a 64-bit VM that runs 32-bit images is still available, and
I use it on a daily basis.

But two caveats:

1) You have to compile it yourself from squeakvm.org sources.

2) I use Linux, and nobody has been maintaining OS X or Windows
for the interpreter VM.

The traditional interpreter VM has problems on OS X nowadays. The
Quartz VM display module does not build (the X11 display module is
fine). And the VM "works" but crashes quickly as soon as you do
something real with it. It looks to me like issues related to
the llvm compiler (versus gcc). The updates by Nicolas and others
in the oscog branch would probably address these issues, but I am
not in a position to confirm.

At the present time, older images are supported by either the
SqueakJS VM, or by the traditional interpreter VM on Linux.

Dave

 
Hi Cl??ment,

As far as I know, the only way to convert a 32-bit Spur image to
64-bit Spur is with the VMMaker similator based conversion. No
reverse conversion (64 bit to 32 bit) is currently available.

SystemTracer has not been adapted to trace Spur images, so no
in-image tool is available. But using the simulator tools in
VMMaker to do conversions makes a lot of sense, because they
are easier to debug and support. The only negative is that they
require a separate helper image to perform the image tracing.

As an aside, even though we may no longer have a need for tracing
images on tiny machines with extremely small memories, the
SystemTracer approach is really very cool and I cannot resist
quoting this snippet from the comment of class SystemTracer:

   NOTE:  The SystemTracer was invented by Ted Kaehler.  It has gone
   through many variations.  I have simplified it and adapted it to
   work with Squeak's limited Object hashing.  It has written runnable
   Mac images on a Mac.  Some changes may be needed for it to produce
   runnable images on a bigEndian machine.  -- Dan I. 9/29/97

Dave

On Mon, Oct 21, 2019 at 04:57:04PM +0300, Cl??ment B??ra wrote:
> 
> Is there a tool to convert 32 bits images into 64 bits images?
> I know it's possible through the Spur64bootstrap in the VMMaker packager.
> But is it possible to do it with the ImageWriter? Is there an easy way to
> load the packages and do it?
> Sorry I'm not on squeak-dev, maybe I should be.
>
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 3:49 AM David T. Lewis <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> >  Hi John,
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 09:56:16PM +0000, John M McIntosh wrote:
> > >
> > > Does anyone have a build for making a 64bit squeak VM that runs 32bit
> > images?
> > > I have one from July 8th 2010.
> > > Was there any created over the years since? Say pre-cog etc?
> > > People are migrating to Catalina and discovering they can't access their
> > old images.
> > >
> >
> > See attached screen image.
> >
> > So yes, a 64-bit VM that runs 32-bit images is still available, and
> > I use it on a daily basis.
> >
> > But two caveats:
> >
> > 1) You have to compile it yourself from squeakvm.org sources.
> >
> > 2) I use Linux, and nobody has been maintaining OS X or Windows
> > for the interpreter VM.
> >
> > The traditional interpreter VM has problems on OS X nowadays. The
> > Quartz VM display module does not build (the X11 display module is
> > fine). And the VM "works" but crashes quickly as soon as you do
> > something real with it. It looks to me like issues related to
> > the llvm compiler (versus gcc). The updates by Nicolas and others
> > in the oscog branch would probably address these issues, but I am
> > not in a position to confirm.
> >
> > At the present time, older images are supported by either the
> > SqueakJS VM, or by the traditional interpreter VM on Linux.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
>
> --
> Cl??ment B??ra
> https://clementbera.github.io/
> https://clementbera.wordpress.com/