> On Aug 11, 2019, at 5:29 PM, ducasse <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
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>> On 11 Aug 2019, at 13:19, Tudor Girba <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Excellent news!
>>
>> I should say that for GT we are currently using the minheadlessVM (Ronie’s work) out of the opensmalltalk-vm repo (https://bintray.com/opensmalltalk/vm/cog) and it works remarkably well.
>>
>> We started to play with your minheadlessVM. So far it looks like there are differences, although I am sure they are not large.
>
> like what?

>> So, what is the difference between the minheadlessVM built by you versus the one from opensmalltalk-vm?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Doru
>>
>>
>>> On Aug 8, 2019, at 9:53 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
>>>
>>> TL;DR;
>>> ======
>>>
>>> For the anxious, you can get real headless vm and image from zero-conf.
>>>
>>> $ wget get.pharo.org/64/80+vmHeadlessLatest | bash
>>>
>>> Zero conf scripts remain unchanged for users.
>>>
>>> However, if you are launching the VM by hand from the executable
>>> instead of the launcher scripts (pharo and pharo-ui) as in
>>>
>>> $ ./pharoexecutable Pharo.image
>>>
>>> the image will launch in headless mode and will not open a window.
>>> To launch it in headfull, you can use the --interactive argument after
>>> the image, which will make the image open a window using SDL2.
>>>
>>> $ ./pharoexecutable Pharo.image --interactive
>>>
>>> Long version
>>> ============
>>>
>>> Hi, this mail is the happy intermediate result of the work that us,
>>> the Pharo Consortium Team, has been doing in the last couple of
>>> months.
>>> Our main objective is to have a real headless implementation of Pharo
>>> where all the responsibility to open or not a World window (or other)
>>> is handled by the image.
>>> For doing so we have done a series of modifications in the image and
>>> the VM side.
>>> We consider this is the path that Pharo 8 and following versions
>>> should follow, as it will severely improve server-side and command
>>> line Pharo and in building custom desktop applications.
>>>
>>> These modifications are available only in 64-bits machines (Windows,
>>> OSX, and Linux).
>>> ARM32 and 64bits headless is in the roadmap, but it is delayed because
>>> we have prioritized our three major platforms for this first couple of
>>> months.
>>>
>>> All this work is based in Opensmalltalk-VM and Ronnie's initial work
>>> on headless.
>>> We are really grateful to all the contributors in the history of this
>>> nice product.
>>> To achieve a real headless VM we have brought modifications in the
>>> source tree because most of the platform code to open and manipulate
>>> windows is not required anymore.
>>> Instead, we use the SDL2 library that implements a nice layer on top
>>> of the OS and allows us to manage on the image side through FFI.
>>>
>>> So this mail is now an open call for (beta?)testing.
>>> The sources of the current VM we are building are in the headless branch in
>>> https://github.com/pharo-project/opensmalltalk-vm
>>> And we have set up a CI that is both building and testing the VM in
>>> https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/pharo-vm/job/headless/
>>>
>>> For the future we have a lot of ideas, that will wait for another long
>>> email or a beer-talk @ESUG.
>>> We want to hear your ideas!!
>>>
>>> Image-Side Improvements
>>> =======================
>>>
>>> - The image handles the creation or not of the main world window.
>>> - We incorporated the idea of World renderer, where different backends
>>> are used to render the world.
>>> - We have 3 backends: VM support (compatibility with non-headless
>>> VMs), and OSWindow with two backends: SDL and GTK3+.
>>> - The modifications in the image are fully backward compatible with
>>> the non-headless VM and are pushed since weeks in the latest 8.0
>>> image.
>>> - We move the handling of events to the image side when using SDL and
>>> GTK3+, opening the door to a richer set of events and finer-grained
>>> control over them.
>>> - SDL and GTK versions are implemented using FFI calls.
>>>
>>> VM-Side Improvements
>>> ====================
>>>
>>> - VMMaker code migrated to Tonel thanks to Feenk and included in the
>>> repository of the VM.
>>> - Making VMMaker execute in Pharo 7 and 8.
>>> - Removing GPL code from the VM repository (GDB).
>>>
>>> - Slowly adding new tests for the JIT / Slang and VMGeneration.
>>> - Restructuring of the source code.
>>> - A new simpler CMake build.
>>> - Generate VM code from Slang on each build.
>>> - A CI process to validate (including the run of the tests in Pharo
>>> and the ones adding to the VM).
>>> - Simplification of the codebase.
>>>
>>> - Maximize the reuse of code between the platforms (preferring the
>>> standard versions over the platform-specific).
>>> - Cleaning up duplicated code.
>>> - All the plugins are now external plugins.
>>> - The VM is now a dynamic library. This is a first step towards
>>> embedding Pharo into other applications.
>>> - The main executable is a thin frontend (you can change it or
>>> implement your own).
>>>
>>> - Removing unused plugins.
>>> - Improved crash dump. Especially the crash dump works now in Windows 64bits.
>>> - Dummy implementation of Security plugin (it is going away.... eventually).
>>> - Cleanup of SSL, UUID, and Socket plugin.
>>>
>>> - Cleanup of conditional code (Still to improve).
>>> - Improving the types used in the functions (we have to be neat to be
>>> multiplatform/multi-arch).
>>> - Improving the lookup of modules
>>> - Improving the logging of the VM
>>> - Improving the handling of VM arguments
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for reading so long!!
>>> We hope you enjoy the VM and please tell us all the problems you find!!
>>>
>>> Pablo, Guille, and Esteban
>>>
>>
>> --
>> feenk.com
>>
>> "Being happy is a matter of choice."
>>
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