VMMaker & potential VM Port

 
Greetings,

I am trying to scale the effort to port the Squeak VM to the Inferno OS
        http://inferno-os.org/
but have not yet had success building a minimal VM on Linux using Squeak 4.5 and instructions on
        http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/build-image/
or
        http://www.mirandabanda.org/cogblog/compiling-the-vm/
using VMMaker.

I have tried a couple of buildsqueak*.st scripts with Sq 4.5 but the generated code comes up with a black window or fails altogether.

I know we are all busy (I include myself) but if anyone could help out with suggestions I would appreciate it.

I am reluctant to spend more time on this until I can successfully generate and compile C sources and run an image from the gen'ed sources.

Hints are fine.  I have not used C, gdb, or Make this century, so am probably doing something not too bright.

Thanks in advance,
-KenD

 
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2012-October/166038.html
http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/porting-subfinal%202.pdf
http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/greenberg.pdf

Hi Ken,

The first is a script that will compile a VM for you. I find this gives
me a control experiment to work with, to create a compilation rig with.
The second and third are articles from "Squeak: Open Personal Computing
And Multimedia" about porting and plugins. The second article makes
clear what objects are and how the VM grips them.

I would say time in gdb and with make is proof things have gone off
course. The 2012 script from above does all that for you. If you're
porting, you wouldn't be in VMMaker much, but creating C files in the
platforms directory for a standard VM. This is a C story, though. Lots
of C. But from what you told me in Portland of you're programming
background, it would be no great impediment to you.

Final note, this compiles an Interpreter VM as opposed to a Cog VM,
which is slower but more comprehensible. Exactly two people know how the
Cog VM works in its entirety. Bus factor = 2. It is my opinion that
unless you work for Cadence, there is no clear inside line to compiling
32-bit Cog. I've compiled 64-bit, but I'm not so sure that's a great
idea at the moment. My point is, perhaps you want the older, simpler VM
instead of the JIT'er, which is harder to compile. If you're going to
attempt the port, perhaps you could start a blog? Ask them at
planet.smalltalk.org to add it.

Chris

On 2015-09-24 1:43 AM, Ken.Dickey wrote:

 
On Thu, 24 Sep 2015 17:47:59 -0400
Chris Cunnington <[hidden email]> wrote:
 
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2012-October/166038.html
> http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/porting-subfinal%202.pdf
> http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/CollectiveNBlueBook/greenberg.pdf

Hi Chris.  Thanks !!!

> I would say time in gdb and with make is proof things have gone off
> course. The 2012 script from above does all that for you. If you're
> porting, you wouldn't be in VMMaker much, but creating C files in the
> platforms directory for a standard VM. This is a C story, though. Lots
> of C. But from what you told me in Portland of you're programming
> background, it would be no great impediment to you.

C/C++/gdb/make/.. evaporated from my brain a number of years ago.  Real ugly stuff.  I am too accustomed to dynamic languages with good IDEs.

Inferno does NOT use C.  It uses a programming language called 'Limbo' which, while still a 'device driver language', is much nicer than C.  E.g. Limbo has garbage collection and threads built in.

One possibility is getting VMMaker to spit out Limbo rather than C, hence my interest there.

A more piece-wise approach might be to use a network socket and run the GUI/Presentation in Inferno and the VM as in a web browser.  I am just starting to look at this.  If I take this track I could get the UI part (screen drawing, mouse, keyboard) working as proof of concept learning before diving in to a full VM port.

On the other hand, it might be just as easy to rewrite the GUI pieces directly in Limbo, run 'c2l' (the C to Limbo translator) and edit the half-baked results by hand.

There is much work to do, not much spare time, and a number of approaches I could take.  Hence my scoping/sizing explorations.

> Final note, this compiles an Interpreter VM as opposed to a Cog VM,
> which is slower but more comprehensible.

No problem.  Simpler is better.

I have even considered going back to the original VMMaker with whatever Squeak it ran on to start simple.

Interestingly, Inferno itself compiles to bytecode and runs interpreted or is JIT'ed to native.  Nicer (simpler) to use than then Unix/Linux and runs hosted on Mac/Win/Linux/.. or native on various ARM/Intel/SPARC/PowerPC  hardware (e.g. Nintendo/Android/Raspberry Pi).

> .. If you're going to
> attempt the port, perhaps you could start a blog? Ask them at
> planet.smalltalk.org to add it.

No commitment at this point.  We all suffer from busy lives.  First have to do some experimental 'probes'/prototypes to try/size things out.

I do have instances of Inferno OS running and talking together on my ARM and Intel laptops.  The idea of something simpler and more portable than most OSs (but unlike 'SqueakNoOS' has someone else doing the heavy lifting) appeals to me.  Especially W.R.T. the Maker movement.

I like things which have simpler uses and explanations.  In particular, I like to "take the magic out" and "see to the bottom", or get as close as I can.

My ideal would be to run Cuis on Inferno on commodity hardware and see where that leads.  Far from mainstream, but a crystal/seed from which something nice could grow.

Thanks again for the pointers,
-KenD

 
On Thu, 24 Sep 2015 17:47:59 -0400
Chris Cunnington <[hidden email]> wrote:

> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2012-October/166038.html

FYI: This script got close.

The make died trying to build GStreamerPlugin.c reporting:
  error: ‘cbnewpad’ undeclared

However, I just built vm-display-X11 and vm-sound-null and convinced the Squeak 4.5 image to run.

Thanks again!
-KenD

Chris is right Ken - get used to building the plain interpreter first so you feel you can trust the tools. It’s quicker to build, simpler to debug and easier to test.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Not an idiot, but plays one in his life.

 

 


On 2015-09-24 3:59 AM, Ken.Dickey wrote: Bert Freudenberg wrote a JavaScript VM and VMMaker spits out JavaScript
to do that, I believe. That might be a good example of how to use
VMMaker for Limbo.

> A more piece-wise approach might be to use a network socket and run the GUI/Presentation in Inferno and the VM as in a web browser.  I am just starting to look at this.  If I take this track I could get the UI part (screen drawing, mouse, keyboard) working as proof of concept learning before diving in to a full VM port.
>
> On the other hand, it might be just as easy to rewrite the GUI pieces directly in Limbo, run 'c2l' (the C to Limbo translator) and edit the half-baked results by hand.
c2l that's interesting.
That's sounds pretty cool.
>
> I like things which have simpler uses and explanations.  In particular, I like to "take the magic out" and "see to the bottom", or get as close as I can.
>
> My ideal would be to run Cuis on Inferno on commodity hardware and see where that leads.  Far from mainstream, but a crystal/seed from which something nice could grow.
Cuis runs on an Interpreter VM. And you want to write a different VM.
OK. I certainly would like to hear more about this in one capacity or
another.

Chris
>
> Thanks again for the pointers,
> -KenD

 
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 10:25:09 -0400
Chris Cunnington <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Cuis runs on an Interpreter VM. And you want to write a different VM.
> OK. I certainly would like to hear more about this in one capacity or
> another.

Cuis is running on the Cog StackInterpreter VM (NOT Spur yet) on both Intel and ARM CPUs.

Baby steps..
-KenD

 
On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 03:59:16PM +0800, Ken.Dickey wrote:
Hi Ken,

If you want to start simple with an interpreter VM, and if you have a Linux
system to work with, here is how to do it:

  http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2015-April/018259.html

Once you have that working (should take about 10 minutes), try loading VMMaker
and generating a minimal set of sources. Evaluate "VMMakerTool minimal" and
use that to generate a set of sources with just the minimum set of plugins
needed to run. That will give you a slow but working VM that can talk to
files and networking. If you don't care about networking, you can remove
SocketPlugin from the configuration and you will still have a working VM.

HTH,

Dave

 
On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 14:41:47 -0400
"David T. Lewis" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Many thanks!!  32 bit build workes fine.

Now back to writing Limbo code,
-KenD

 
David,

BTW, the build64 breaks near the end (make output attached).

I don't need it.  Just FYI.

Thanks again!
-KenD

 

 


On 2015-09-26 2:41 PM, David T. Lewis wrote: That's pretty cool. I just started a x64 image with the x64 Interpreter
VM using an installed script that looks at the image to decide which VM
to employ.

Chris

Ken, you do realise that you can never actually finish writing limbo code, right?


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Oxymorons: Resident alien

 
On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 08:09:21PM +0800, Ken.Dickey wrote:
>  
> David,
>
> BTW, the build64 breaks near the end (make output attached).
>
> I don't need it.  Just FYI.

Thanks Ken, I added a Mantis report http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=7835
as a reminder to fix it.

FYI, you can force a plugin or vm module to be excluded from the build
in order to work around this kind of problem by adding a parameter like
this to the configure command line:

   --without-vm-sound-NAS
   
If you are using the Makefile to drive the configure and build, then you
can add it there.

Dave

>
> Thanks again!
> -KenD

 
On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 09:19:06 -0700
tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Ken, you do realise that you can never actually finish writing limbo code, right?

Picture me ever in limbo, cursing the infernal machine.  ;^)

--
-KenD