Re: Solaris 2.5 x86?

[Thierry Goubier <Thierry.Goubier@enst-bretagne.fr>]

On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:

> > Hum, did you gave up for tinySelf ?
> 
> No, I am still working on it. It is taking me more
> than the few days I promised on my web page, but
> it is comming.

That's good news !
 
> > J.C. Mincke seems to be on the right
> > way for his implementation. VCODE seems to be the right tool to attempt
> > this implementation, but the x86 version is not yet ready.
> 
> That's great! The more implementations there are of
> the language, the stronger it is (as long as they can
> run the same programs).

This is a hard question. Will the implementation runs the same programs ? 
I don't think so, unless those programs don't use certain features (like 
the UI, for example).

I'm not particularly found of morphs :-) and the self world is really 
slow to run, unless you allocate 20 MB to the code cache... There's also 
some problems with the metaphor used. Is it the response time, or is it 
the lack of scrollbars, but I think the display of large collections (or 
arrays) in an outliner is particularly annoying.

> > But the result won't be like Self 4.0.
> 
> Which is why I said that a port of Self 4.0 to other machines
> would be very interesting even if we have other implementations
> on these machines.

It may be used as a comparison for theses "other" implementations; I 
don't think that anybody will manage the quality of the Self 4.0 
implementation anytime soon.

A goal would be, anyway, to share enough common ground to run most 
programs through a rebuilding of the Self part of the image.

By the way, what is the position of the Self group (or owners) about the 
reuse of the Self 4.0 source ? Not the VM source, but the Self one ? Can 
we use it to accelerate the development of others implementations ?

> > I believe that very few Linux
> > machines will have enough memory to run a direct port of Self 4.0. (I
> > can't even find a Sparc usable for it :-()
> 
> True, but you can get 32MB of RAM for 600 dollars in Brazil -
> I imagine it is even cheaper in other places. That is a lot,
> but you can easily pay more than that for a C++ compiler. If
> you just want to try Self out to see what it is like, then
> this isn't practical. But for serious use I think a Linux
> port would be great.
> 
> -- Jecel

Hum, to get a truly efficient Self 4.0, 64 MB isn't enough on a Sparc 20 
biprocessor. Even if the x86 code is more compact that the Sparc one, I'd 
bet 32 MB isn't enough under Linux (and Linux has response problems under 
heavy swapping).

And the compiler used is gcc...

I think a Self 5.0 will be needed for a Linux port.

Thierry.
___________________Thierry.Goubier@enst-bretagne.fr__________________
    Je ne suis pas un patriote car je n'ai pas peur de l'etranger
        I'm not a patriot because I don't fear foreigners
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