[squeak-dev] Learn on Squeak VM

Hi, everyone. I am very new to Squeak. I need to learn on Squeak virtual machine and plugin for my project. I have never taken any courses on virtual machine or compiler before. I hope that somebody can show me where to start with, will it be the Blue book? Or perhaps there are other alternatives. I have read through some webpages in www.squeakvm.org, but I find it hard to understand maybe because I don't have a strong foundation on this. Thank you so much for helping.

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> There's a book you could use to learn Squeak, You can get to it by going to
http://www.squeak.org/Documentation/  and clicking on the "Squeak By
Example" link.  Hope that helps. Some of the other docs on that same page
should also help too.

Regards, The Viking - another Squeaker.


Thank you for the information. Actually I have finish the book "Squeak by Example". I have learn the basics on Squeak. I wish to get some relevent knowledge on Squeak virtual machine before I can start on my project(my project is about Squeak VM and plugins).

I have start to learn from  the Blue book, but I wonder if there are any alternative way.

Thank you.

Starting from nothing and trying to achieve some project in the VM is  
a hard road.

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/VMMAker
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/676
http://www.rowledge.org/tim/squeak/OE-Tour.html
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1447
- will all help but you really are facing a task a bit like designing  
a new valve train for Formula One when you haven't been taught to use  
a spanner and haven't seen an engine before. I hope this project isn't  
needed in a short timeframe.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Programming is an art form that fights back.

Can you tell us more about your project?  Tim's right, if you are expected to make significant changes to the VM then you have a steep learning curve ahead of you.  However, writing a VM plugin to implement a primitive isn't as daunting a task.

Cheers,
Josh

Ang Beepeng wrote:

There's a book you could use to learn Squeak, You can get to it by going to
    

http://www.squeak.org/Documentation/  and clicking on the "Squeak By
Example" link.  Hope that helps. Some of the other docs on that same page
should also help too.

Regards, The Viking - another Squeaker.


Thank you for the information. Actually I have finish the book "Squeak by
Example". I have learn the basics on Squeak. I wish to get some relevent
knowledge on Squeak virtual machine before I can start on my project(my
project is about Squeak VM and plugins). 

I have start to learn from  the Blue book, but I wonder if there are any
alternative way.

Thank you.
  

<quote author="tim Rowledge">
Starting from nothing and trying to achieve some project in the VM is  
a hard road.

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/VMMAker
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/676
http://www.rowledge.org/tim/squeak/OE-Tour.html
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1447
- will all help but you really are facing a task a bit like designing  
a new valve train for Formula One when you haven't been taught to use  
a spanner and haven't seen an engine before. I hope this project isn't  
needed in a short timeframe.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Programming is an art form that fights back.


I understand that it will definitely not be any easy on this. I have roughly one year to work on the project, and it will mainly on writing a plugin to implement a matrix solver primitive. This is roughly what I understand. It's very true that I have really little or no knowledge to start on this, but I am willing to spend time to learn on whatever relevant.

On 26-Jul-08, at 12:27 AM, Ang Beepeng wrote:
You're in luck. I doubt that you will need to learn anything much  
about the VM to do this. What you *will* need is to learn a bit about  
building a vm plugin which is hugely less work. Your exciting part is  
going to be writing the primitive in Slang which although it is a  
simple pidgin-C gets a bit tedious for large chunks of code.

There are lots of example plugins in the VMMaker package. They range  
from the trivial (FileCopyPlugin, for example), through modest  
(SoundCodecPlugin, Matrix2x3Plugin) to the complicated  
(KlattSynthesizerPlugin, RePlugin). You can write all the code in  
Slang, or part in Slang and part in any callable language (make it a  
widely available one if you want the result to be useful to many  
people) or even all in C (given suitable amounts of strange substances).

If you already have a solution to the basic problem for solving  
matrices then making a plugin out of it shouldn't be too hard. You  
really don't need to know how the vm works. What you *will* need to  
understand is how to write and implement good tests in order to decide  
if your plugin is doing exactly what you want. Make friends with  
SUnits (class TestCase and the TestRunner UI).

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: AG: Add Gibberish

Thank you very much the expert advices. I am very encouraged that novices can get help from experts here.

What is the difference between a primitive and a plugin? What are the pros can cons of each? Are plugins superseding primitives in the future?

All the best,
Aik-Siong Koh

On 26-Jul-08, at 9:49 AM, askoh wrote:
>
> What is the difference between a primitive and a plugin? What are  
> the pros
> can cons of each?
Q: what is the difference between 'some apples' and 'a box of apples' ?
A: the box.

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/plugin
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/407



tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
The Static Typing Philosophy: Make it fast. Make it right. Make it run.

Good day. Thanks for all the helps, very much appreciated.

I have been reading, finding steps by steps tutorial on how to create a plugin. I have try out tutorial on the book "Extending the Squeak Virtual Machine" by Andy Greenberg, and web page "NamedPrimitiveTutorial" by the same author. I cant get the plugin to translate into C. According the book we can use the message 'translate'  to translate plugin into C. I figure that there are package like "VMMker-Translate to C", but not sure how to use them.

My question is,is there any step by step example available to learn on how to build a plugin. I saw this page "Extending Squeak by Writing Plugins" by Ned Konz

http://bike-nomad.com/squeak/writingPlugins.html

But I am concern whether the page is up-to-date to learn on, as it seems to be wrote on 2002. (no offence :) Or is there any better place to start with?

Thanks.