Lost with Squeak development

Hi.

I am a Squeak lover who, unfortunately, doesn't have much time to give
to the project at this time. However, every once in a while, I try to
catch up and see what has changed and help at fixing bugs when I get
some spare time or when I just want to clear my mind from non-fun
tasks.

Today, I wanted to build an up-to-date Squeak environment for a
GNU/Linux platform. I will explain what I have tried (so that pointers
can be fixed if needed) and what failed. I may not have tried hard
enough to find some things, but I think there are missing
instructions/pointers anyway.

I started with http://www.squeak.org/Download/. From there, I could
not find the latest development image or any pointer to a recent
version.

I decided to start with an old 3.9a version I had around and update
it. However, it took ages to apply patches and I recalled having read
something about increasing socket performances in the VM, so I tried
to update my VM first.

By following the link on http://www.squeak.org/Download/, I landed
onto http://squeakvm.org/unix/ and extracted the latest version from
SVN from http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak, as directed.

In the platforms/unix ChangeLog I note that the last change seems to
have taken place in March 2005. So be it, let's assume that nothing
has changed in the VM since.

Running "make" yields an error about the "fptr" type not being
defined. I updated the platforms/unix/src32 directory with a fresh run
of the latest VMMaker available on SqueakMap, and get the same error.

Obviously, something is wrong here. I remember having seen the very
same error one year ago or so.

Anyone knowing what's going on?

  Sam
--
Samuel Tardieu -- [hidden email] -- http://www.rfc1149.net/

On 12 Jan 2006 11:53:44 +0100, Samuel Tardieu <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I started with http://www.squeak.org/Download/. From there, I could
> not find the latest development image or any pointer to a recent
> version.
>
If you want to help out with 3.9a, then you need to follow the FTP
link on the download page. I think the website team doesn't want to
make this too obvious - 3.8 is the only version "out", and 3.9 is very
much in development. http://ftp.squeak.org/3.9alpha/ has the latest
images.

> By following the link on http://www.squeak.org/Download/, I landed
> onto http://squeakvm.org/unix/ and extracted the latest version from
> SVN from http://squeakvm.org/svn/squeak, as directed.
>
What is your goal here? Test the build and download process or get a
VM working? Because in the latter case, I think you really should
stick with the published VM :).

I haven't attempted to build a VM in the last year or so, with
exception of the wxSqueak VM but that is a totally different build
environment (MSVC, yikes). So can't help you there.

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 11:53:44AM +0100, Samuel Tardieu wrote:
Clean out your build directory completely, run configure again, then
make. Sometimes the configuration will get out of whack if you have
updated the VMM or platforms sources since the last time you ran
configure.

At the moment, the unix platform sources are probably missing
a function sqGetFilenameFromString(). If so you can patch something
like this into the interpreter to get things working:

sqInt sqGetFilenameFromString(char *aCharBuffer, char *aFilenameString, sqInt filenameLength, sqInt aBoolean) {
        strncpy(aCharBuffer, aFilenameString, filenameLength);
        aCharBuffer[filenameLength] = 0;
}

Dave
 

> Clean out your build directory completely, run configure again, then
> make. Sometimes the configuration will get out of whack if you have
> updated the VMM or platforms sources since the last time you ran
> configure.

I've tried that. It didn't change anything.

> At the moment, the unix platform sources are probably missing
> a function sqGetFilenameFromString(). If so you can patch something
> like this into the interpreter to get things working:

Sorry if this sounds rude (it is not), but why isn't this fix committed
into the SVN repository? Is there a blocking point somewhere? Is there
any immediate action I could help with to resolve this?

  Sam

PS/ sorry for not inserting a correct in-reply-to header and breaking
    threading, I just noticed that gmane has gone berzerk on squeak-dev
    at this time and I had to copy your message from the WWW list archives
--
Samuel Tardieu -- [hidden email] -- http://www.rfc1149.net/

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 12:46:26PM +0100, Samuel Tardieu wrote:
> > Clean out your build directory completely, run configure again, then
> > make. Sometimes the configuration will get out of whack if you have
> > updated the VMM or platforms sources since the last time you ran
> > configure.
>
> I've tried that. It didn't change anything.

I'm not sure what's wrong then. I did a VM build with SVN 1290 and the
latest VMM from SqueakMap, and the only problem I had was the missing
sqGetFilenameFromString().

> > At the moment, the unix platform sources are probably missing
> > a function sqGetFilenameFromString(). If so you can patch something
> > like this into the interpreter to get things working:
>
> Sorry if this sounds rude (it is not), but why isn't this fix committed
> into the SVN repository? Is there a blocking point somewhere? Is there
> any immediate action I could help with to resolve this?

The code snippet I sent was not a fix, it's just the quick and dirty
hack that I personally used the other day to complete a build. I assume
that the SVN sources will get back in sync sometime soon.
 
The VM sources on SVN are a moving target, and the SVN platform sources
and VMMaker sources can be (and are frequently are) out of sync. At the
moment, they are actually quite good as things have settled down a lot
since the 64 bit updates last year.

Note that I am not one of the VM developers, so don't take what I
say as authorative.  There is a mailing list for VM development at
[hidden email].

Dave
 

On 12-Jan-06, at 2:53 AM, Samuel Tardieu wrote:

It looks to me that the various unix flavours need some more  
descriptive wording. For example, the pointer for a linux vm really  
ought to mention that it is a x86 linux build.
The unix VM Source link ought to mention it is a 3.7.7 version -  
though I'm not sure it should be there at all really as it distracts  
from what *should* be the definitive squeakvm.org site.
Quite a bit has as it happens. There have not been suitable updates  
on the website. I don't have access so can't provide them.

>
> Running "make" yields an error about the "fptr" type not being
> defined. I updated the platforms/unix/src32 directory with a fresh run
> of the latest VMMaker available on SqueakMap, and get the same error.
The latest VMMaker releases don't use or refer to fptr type so you  
certainly shouldn't be getting complaints about it.

>
> Obviously, something is wrong here. I remember having seen the very
> same error one year ago or so.
>
> Anyone knowing what's going on?
Yes - the svn unix branch is quite a lot out of date right now. I  
don't know why Ian puts copies of the generated src[32|64] dirs in  
the unix branch - it seems it can only lead to confusion. But it's  
his directory and I neither can nor will touch it. Delete that  
directory/directories and cleanly regenerate it/them.

The very latest SVN level needs some platform updates that so far as  
I know have only been applied to OSX and RISC OS as yet. David  
offered a quick patch that should at least allow compilation but may  
not provide full functionality.

A possibly simpler route is to use the VMMaker 3.8b4 release (read  
the release notes about which svn level to fetch) to make a 3.8 vm.

I would apologise for the condition of squeakvm.org but since I can't  
affect it I can't really accept any of the blame...

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: DO: Deadstart Operator