Paul D. Fernhout wrote: [...] > but I was wondering, now that Sun has officially announced moving the > JVM and Java SE to the GPL, if there would be any serious interest > (especially at the GNU/FSF level) in having GNU Smalltalk on the JVM?
I've been vaguely thinking of that sort of thing. On the plus side, it would mean that it would be possible to use somebody else's fast, optimised VM for Smalltalk, which has vast performance and portability benefits... but on the minus side, Java's a lousy match. Smalltalk is far more dynamic than Java is, and the VM is accordingly different. Trying to add methods to a class, for example, is (AFAIK) impossible in Java. This means you'd have to either reimplement the class system without using the JVM's native one, or do horrible workarounds. (Talks2, for example, explicitly invokes the command-line Java compiler every time it needs to compile Smalltalk code. St/JVM doesn't have any technical information, but reading between the lines it looks like they have a standalone compiler which doesn't allow dynamic updates once it's been compiled. Bistro redefined the language to make life easier for themselves.) A better match could be something like the Lua VM, which is tiny, portable, and extremely fast, but that doesn't get you the benefits of using the JVM. [...] > In any case, it seemed like, respecting the license, that GNU Smalltalk > could be a source of much good code for such a system and its image. I > know right now GST is heavily tied to C etc., so no doubt there would be > a bunch of work, perhaps best done along the lines of what Squeak does > to generate the VM from translating Smalltalk-like code. It'd require a total redesign from the ground up. Sorry. You may be able to use the pure-Smalltalk part of the standard library, but I doubt very much if any of the runtime would be at all useful. -- ╭─┈David Given┈──McQ─╮ "A line dancer near a graduated cylinder, the │┈ [EMAIL PROTECTED] blithe spirit inside some wheelbarrow, and a tomato │┈([EMAIL PROTECTED])┈│ are what made America great!" --- received via spam ╰─┈www.cowlark.com┈──╯
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