A quick update

[talksmall]

I haven't updated the list about recent changes for a while. So here's
a few bullet points for anyone still listening.

Since the OSX port I've mainly been working on Newspeak porting, or
related activities (eg. porting Aliens which Newspeak uses).

It's been bugging me for a while that there was no way to compress the
sources database, so I've been working on a solution. The code is
written and I'm using it personally, but until I've gone a few miles
with it I'm not ready to release it.

I'm gradually enhancing the debugger, with the eventual intention of
full edit-and-continue support. Not there yet, but I just added the
ability to inspect activation temporaries by name, so we are making
progress.

Various bug fixes, including a recent nasty in the GC code.

Somebody is obviously still accessing the google code site. I recently
made the image and Windows executables featured downloads (which makes
them appear on the front page) and noticed a jump in the download
frequency. Great stuff. All feedback welcome.

Cheers, talksmall

[mike clemow]

I lurk here... I've been waiting for the OS X port. So, How should I
build the VM on OS X 10.4? Just like in Linux? Use svn to get the
source and then build using make?

-Mike

--
http://michaelclemow.com
http://semiotech.org

[talksmall]

Hi Mike,
The OSX porting work that I did was under 10.5. I don't have access to
a 10.4 system to test on. The other point to be aware of is that the
OSX port, like with the Linux port, is command line only for the time
being.

On the plus side there is a pre-built binary for OSX (built under
10.5) available from the downloads section. I've just added it as a
featured download, so it should be accessible from the project front-
page as well. Since you mention 10.4, I'm guessing this binary may not
be any use to you. Try it out, but if that is the case, please let me
know. I think I should be able to build a binary for 10.4 too.

Cheers, talksmall

PS. I really must add instructions for building under Xcode to the
Wiki. Sigh, another thing for the list.

[mike clemow]

Hi,

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 11:48 PM, talksmall <stephe...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Mike,
> The OSX porting work that I did was under 10.5. I don't have access to
> a 10.4 system to test on. The other point to be aware of is that the
> OSX port, like with the Linux port, is command line only for the time
> being.

Yes, I understood this from the google code site. I was just
wondering what the compile process was for *nix systems (like OS X &
linux) and whether or not I could compile my own binary from the
latest source on 10.4 in the same manner as I would for Linux. I
downloaded the latest source but couldn't find a proper Makefile. You
mentioned Xcode... is this how you compiled your binary in 10.5?

Cheer,
Mike

[talksmall]

Hi Mike,

On Nov 16, 7:33 pm, mike clemow <gelfm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>

> On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 11:48 PM, talksmall <stephenlr...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Mike,
> > The OSX porting work that I did was under 10.5. I don't have access to
> > a 10.4 system to test on. The other point to be aware of is that the
> > OSX port, like with the Linux port, is command line only for the time
> > being.
>
> Yes, I understood this from the google code site.  I was just
> wondering what the compile process was for *nix systems (like OS X &
> linux) and whether or not I could compile my own binary from the
> latest source on 10.4 in the same manner as I would for Linux.  I
> downloaded the latest source but couldn't find a proper Makefile.  You
> mentioned Xcode...  is this how you compiled your binary in 10.5?

The short answer is yes, I built the binary using XCode. If you check
out the gcc-linux branch from SVN you will find a build.osx directory
and within that you will find the XCode project.

In addition to that checkout, you will also need an image and sources
bundle (specifically the strongtalk.bst image file and the source
directory and its files) from the latest archive available on the
downloads page (http://strongtalk.googlecode.com/files/strongtalk-r181-
image%2Bsources.tgz). For OSX (and Linux for that matter) you can
effectively ignore the comment suggesting that this is for versions
r181 and later - the only significant change to the VM has been the
addition of a debugging primitive only relevant to the GUI debugger.

I used Xcode v3.1.3 to build the binary in the downloads section,
though I have no reason to believe that the most recent version will
cause any problems. Just to satisfy myself that it all still works I
just rebuilt the app and all the Smalltalk level tests pass (I haven't
yet tried to integrate the VM-level C++ tests with the OSX build). I
had one tiny error to fix in ClassChange::compute_needed_schema_change
() (found in vm/memory/reflection.cpp) due to different treatment of
the redeclaration of a loop index variable between MS and GCC. Removal
of the redeclaration fixed that. I'll upload the change to SVN.

I also tried building against the 10.4 SDK. The only problem seems to
be the absence of the getcontext(ucontext_t*) library function which
does not appear to be defined in the 10.4 SDK. This is not critical to
the operation of the VM. Commenting out the body of the
os_dump_context method in os_darwin.cpp allows the project to build
and run on my OSX 10.5 iMac.

As I mentioned, I don't have a 10.4 box to try it out on, but I'm
happy to upload the binary if you want to test it out. Alternatively,
I'll do my best to help if you want to build it yourself.

Regards, talksmall

PS. the reason that this is on the gcc-linux branch is historical; my
first involvement with Strongtalk was porting the code to linux and
the results were on this branch. At some stage we should merge this
back into the trunk, as this is now the leading edge of Strongtalk
development, but for the time being it resides on the gcc-linux branch.

[mike clemow]

Hello again,

The XCode project wouldn't open in my version of XCode. This is just
as well--I'm starting to see the writing on the wall here and other
places and I think that it's high time I upgraded my system. I've
been sitting here with the Snow Leopard disks, but haven't been able
to upgrade the system because I needed to keep a working system
working for the last few years and projects haven't let up.

I will re-approach this once I upgrade to 10.6. If there are problems
then, at least they will be relevant problems.

Thanks again!

Mike