With proper support, this is doable I think. But the student will have to be really motivated and smart I suppose.
Which raises the question: how does one find such ones? Phil On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 3:19 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > [email protected] wrote: > >> Ron, >> >> Sure but at this time, not being able to run the simulator in a full >> Pharo environment is a severe issue. >> >> The key advantage is that the Smalltalk VM is written in itself. >> >> Now, what do I experience is that it is hard to embark on VM work. >> >> Why? Even if the PharoVMBuilders help in generating and compiling the VM >> for several platforms (I can build for Windows 8.1, OSX, iOS, Debian 7 etc) >> this is only one part of the puzzle. >> >> The next step, is to understand how things do work for real, the >> interpret() C loop isn't gonna help me one bit, I need to be able to >> simulate this one in a Simulator. And I want to do that on the Pharo >> platform. Currently on 2.0 - this will (again) be fun to get to work on 3.0. >> >> I am not in the league of the VM maintainers obviously. >> >> But Clement provided me with Eliot's Cog Simulation image, which works >> for his own work. But only his own. We do not have something like a >> Configuration to get the same thing. And that's a very acute pain. There >> are only so many hours in a day, true. So, in order to bring in more >> people/resources for the VM work, the barrier to entry should be moved a >> tad down. >> >> We tried to have the StackSimulator working for a while (Stephan I'll >> definitely get your version, thanks for it). This is also because >> InterpreterSimulator doesn't work anymore and we have to use the >> StackInterpreter instead (which is complicated already vs pure interpreter). >> >> All of this rant to say that having a clean interpreter and a basic image >> (Maybe PharoKernel/Hazelnut/Boostrapping/Spoon will give us a very >> simple image to simulate - the whole image isn't really needed. Hopefully >> Oz will also move us forward on that front). >> >> A real Pharo image is overkill for this as a ton of plugins get involved >> etc. >> >> The core system should be the same for Pharo/Squeak/... : >> >> VMMaker-MemoryManager >> VMMaker-Interpreter >> VMMaker-InterpreterSimulation >> VMMaker-MemoryManagerSimulation >> >> and of course the Slang things (VMMaker-Support and VMMaker-Translation >> to C). >> >> What I'd love to end up with is an embeddable VM that we could hook into >> other environments, languages etc (a bit like TCL for example). This >> requires work on how the VM core runs. And to explore this, simulation is >> needed. >> >> Sorry for the long post. I wish I was a millionaire to pour in some cash >> into the project to speed some areas up. Working on it :-) Maybe should we >> work in that direction for funding. http://www.gv.com/ where are you? >> >> Phil >> >> Getting the simulator working in Pharo could be a GSoC project? or is it > too advanced? > cheers -ben > >
