Debian tarball updates?

Yes it’s the source for the existing “squeak-vm” Debian package we are talking about. The Debian “etoys” package depends on it. 

We are “upstream”,  the maintainers at Debian take our latest tar ball from http://squeakvm.org/unix/release/ and build a new package.

The latest Debian version is therefore 4.10.2.2614, corresponding to our latest tarball in that directory, so from their point of view it’s up to date. From our point of view it’s slightly outdated, since that tarball was created in 2012. It contains an interpreter VM for pre-Spur 32 bit images that compiles and runs fine on both 32 and 64 bit architectures. 

That VM can not run recent Squeak releases anymore, because it cannot read Spur Images. It can also not run 64 bit images. And it also is much slower than Cog VMs. 

The plan is therefore to add a VM that can run Cog / Spur images to that bundle. The script that starts the image needs to be extended to check the image  format number and launch it with the right VM. 

That means the tarball needs to contain two source trees: the existing one for 6502 images (like Etoys), and another one 6504 images and later (any Squeak image since 4.1). We only have JITs for Intel and ARM, so on those arch we can compile Cog, on all other platforms we would compile StackVMs (or maybe compile Stack for every arch, and Cog where possible). 

In addition we might want to check if we should upstream any of the patches the Debian maintainers did over the years. And maybe add a README to 

http://files.squeak.org/debian/ that those packages are superseded by the official Debian package. 

Thank you! I think that will be a fun and useful project. Overdue too 😅  

- Vanessa -

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 19:20 Phil B <[hidden email]> wrote:

Assuming you are looking for someone to create/update the Debian source package (i.e. to update the package in the Debian repos) and not just a standalone tarball that builds on Debian, I'd be willing to do it.  While I don't live and breathe creating Debian source packages, I have had to do it from time to time over the years.

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 3:28 PM tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

Oh, yeah. $500 bounty.

> On 2021-06-16, at 10:34 AM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Is anyone out there interested in, and able to spend the time, to try to sort out an update of the Debian tarball stuff?
>
> A long time ago we went through some considerable effort to get Squeak into the system and it seems to have languished ever since. It would make us look somewhat more contemporary if we could get an updated package built and inserted.
>
> Please, if you can help, let us know.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Strange OpCodes: RWD: Rewind Disk
>
>
>
>


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Cackles a lot, but I ain't seen no eggs yet.

Vanessa,

Thanks for filling in some of the gaps for me.  It does change the scope a bit from what I had envisioned.  I was thinking that this was an effort to package up the modern VM as a separate package from the classic VM rather than integrating it with the existing classic VM package.  Has anyone run the plan by the Debian maintainers yet? 

Thanks,

Phil

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 1:27 PM Vanessa Freudenberg <[hidden email]> wrote:

Yes it’s the source for the existing “squeak-vm” Debian package we are talking about. The Debian “etoys” package depends on it. 

We are “upstream”,  the maintainers at Debian take our latest tar ball from http://squeakvm.org/unix/release/ and build a new package.

The latest Debian version is therefore 4.10.2.2614, corresponding to our latest tarball in that directory, so from their point of view it’s up to date. From our point of view it’s slightly outdated, since that tarball was created in 2012. It contains an interpreter VM for pre-Spur 32 bit images that compiles and runs fine on both 32 and 64 bit architectures. 

That VM can not run recent Squeak releases anymore, because it cannot read Spur Images. It can also not run 64 bit images. And it also is much slower than Cog VMs. 

The plan is therefore to add a VM that can run Cog / Spur images to that bundle. The script that starts the image needs to be extended to check the image  format number and launch it with the right VM. 

That means the tarball needs to contain two source trees: the existing one for 6502 images (like Etoys), and another one 6504 images and later (any Squeak image since 4.1). We only have JITs for Intel and ARM, so on those arch we can compile Cog, on all other platforms we would compile StackVMs (or maybe compile Stack for every arch, and Cog where possible). 

In addition we might want to check if we should upstream any of the patches the Debian maintainers did over the years. And maybe add a README to 

http://files.squeak.org/debian/ that those packages are superseded by the official Debian package. 

Thank you! I think that will be a fun and useful project. Overdue too 😅  

- Vanessa -

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 19:20 Phil B <[hidden email]> wrote:

Assuming you are looking for someone to create/update the Debian source package (i.e. to update the package in the Debian repos) and not just a standalone tarball that builds on Debian, I'd be willing to do it.  While I don't live and breathe creating Debian source packages, I have had to do it from time to time over the years.

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 3:28 PM tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

Oh, yeah. $500 bounty.

> On 2021-06-16, at 10:34 AM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Is anyone out there interested in, and able to spend the time, to try to sort out an update of the Debian tarball stuff?
>
> A long time ago we went through some considerable effort to get Squeak into the system and it seems to have languished ever since. It would make us look somewhat more contemporary if we could get an updated package built and inserted.
>
> Please, if you can help, let us know.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Strange OpCodes: RWD: Rewind Disk
>
>
>
>


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Cackles a lot, but I ain't seen no eggs yet.