SqueakNOS on Raspberry Pi

http://tessel.io/
is building a microcontroller running pure JavaScript - no OS.

Can we have pure Smalltalk running on Raspberry Pi or equivalent? How hard would it be? Is SqueakNOS a candidate for that?

Thanks,
Aik-Siong Koh

On 24.03.2014, at 13:50, askoh <[hidden email]> wrote:

> http://tessel.io/
> is building a microcontroller running pure JavaScript - no OS.
>
> Can we have pure Smalltalk running on Raspberry Pi or equivalent? How hard
> would it be? Is SqueakNOS a candidate for that?

https://github.com/pablomarx/RaspberrySqueak

- Bert -

Does MicroSqueak fit into this discussion?

http://web.media.mit.edu/~jmaloney/microsqueak/readme.txt

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-beginners/2011-January/000043.html

Is the RPi more suitable to an MVC gui than a Morphic one?

What does one do with a SqueakNOS. My instinct is that the answer is, "A lot!".
It has been a long time since I have mucked around with hardware, but I have an
RPi running Squeak and dream of it's potential.

-jrm

There’s obvious appeal to a no-OS system but let’s not forget there are lots of hassles as well. Where are we going to get network communication, usb & gpu driver code from? Typically somebody has written all that stuff for some OS or other and it has all sorts of assumptions built in. With no OS available you won’t be running a lot of programs that people find useful, so your end use has to be possible with only what you create in Squeak. The probably rules out a full web-browser unless you have a lot of resources. On the other hand there are a lot of neat things to do.

We tried at Interval back in …. ergh, the last millennium. Kinda succeeded, kinda failed, got killed. Long story. See http://www.rowledge.org/resources/tim's-Home-page/Squeak/RTOSinSmalltalk.html.pdf for some of it.

Generally I’d be inclined to use a minimalist OS rather than no OS. Unless, of course, you’re intent is to do the OS code, in which case you obviously want to write it yourself. Choose your fun carefully!


>
> Does MicroSqueak fit into this discussion?
>
> http://web.media.mit.edu/~jmaloney/microsqueak/readme.txt

It’s interesting but a Pi is not a tiny  slow machine with negligible memory; it has a 7/8/900MHz ARMv6 with FPU vector hardware, 512Mb of ram and a damn big GPU. Image size is not an issue; too much poorly thought out code in crucial places is more like it. The Pi cpu is burdened with a rather slow memory interface though, which requires cleverness (see the bitblt ARM optimisations in BitBLT code) when moving lots of bits around.

>
> Is the RPi more suitable to an MVC gui than a Morphic one?

Yes in the sense that the MVC UI code does much less and so does it quicker. No in the sense that Morphic is better for making visually appealing and interaction rich UIs. The answer is to improve Morphic code. Cuis has been making some good progress here, perhaps some of the lessons learned should be transferred.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Fractured Idiom:- QUIP PRO QUO - A fast retort

Am 03/24/2014 06:31 PM, schrieb tim Rowledge:
> Generally I’d be inclined to use a minimalist OS rather than no OS. Unless, of course, you’re intent is to do the OS code, in which case you obviously want to write it yourself. Choose your fun carefully!
Yup, even though I find the thought of a No-OS Squeak quite attractive, something built on a mininmal linux kernel would
probably be doable with much less effort.
If you look at the very small linux systems that are at the heart of many phones, routers and other embedded devices,
this is well-tested practice.
Hoever, instead of a MVC GUI I would rather go in a different direction for the Pi Squeak: attach morphic directly to
the OpenGL ES machinery...

Cheers,
Hans-Martin