Re: Building on linux

On May 15, 9:32 pm, talksmall <[email protected]> wrote:
> On May 14, 8:14 pm, prunedtree <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Regarding linux portage, I installed debian etch on a VM and started
> > to work with GCC 4.1
> > After some fixes (mainly wasting time to please GCC zeal) i got the
> > whole system (without os.cpp) to compile.
>
> > All the link errors are related to os.cpp, which shows that the
> > current design is already very portable (one file contains all the
> > platform specificity)
>
> > I'm now writing os_linux.cpp, the implementation of the needed linux-
> > specific code. Once i get the VM to compile under linux, I'll try to
> > pass a few benchmarks, but don't expect much because this is a very
> > unfriendly environnement to me, and i'm loosing way to much time. I'm
> > expecting linux users to keep the port alive after that.
>
> > regards,
> > prunedtree
>
> I've been lurking on the group for a while, and messing about for a
> little while with a linux port (Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, gcc 4.1.2, Eclipse
> CDT).
>
> I've made some progress with the linux port. I've built a partial
> os.cpp (which I named gnu_os.cpp ... oh dear, nevermind). I have
> implemented the thread creation and os init portions and have stubbed
> out the rest for now, just to get it to link.
>
> This is enough to resolve all of the os.cpp link dependencies. In
> addition I had to build a version of binutils with COFF support and
> rename a number of the symbols in order to link in the binaries.

Does it work ? (well, it's not mandatory anymore anyway)

>
> Unfortunately, I've had little luck with the noasm patches that you've
> posted to the group in the past :-( Any idea when these are to be
> merged into the mainline?
>
> I have also had to make quite a few additions to the dependency files
> in order to resolve all of the include dependencies.

Strange. My current tree compiles against both msvc 6 sp5 & gcc 3.4.4-
mingw32

>
> My changes allow me to start the VM and singlestepping confirms that
> it's started executing the bytecode (resolving inline cache misses
> etc.). I soon get a seg fault though which I'm trying to track down.

When i ported to GCC i had to fix several nasty bugs before getting
everything to run. GCC misses some an empty base class optimisation
and displaces the primary/secondary caches... this crashes the
interpreter when they are accessed in assembly. Other bug is related
to a __GNUC__ flag disabling the special calling convention for
primitives (but the assembly code doesn't pop the stack, so you need
pascal convention). Might be other GCC issues i fixed, moreover I did
a few changes that improve stability (guarding against edx trashing in
constant propagation of primitives in the compiler for instance)

>
> The changes I have made so far are enough to indicate that the OS
> dependencies leak out a little further than os.cpp. thread ids are
> referenced as ints (on linux they are pthread_t s - POSIX threads
> don't you know) Event and Thread are downcasts of Windows HANDLEs and
> the handles themselves are exposed via get_hinstance etc. I've
> implemented a wrapper Thread class and an Event wrapping a semaphore
> protected boolean to take care of some of this and just ignored the
> handles for now.

Interressing. There is indeed some win32-specific things (the stuff
related to hinstance, etc...) But it looks like we only need some
cleanup to achieve a fairly neutral API. This part of the VM is not
performance-critical, so we can afford encapsulation overhead.

> Done nothing with DLLs or the timing functions.
> Possible problem there - Linux only seems to have support for per
> process timing stats. May not be an issue as the current VM is
> effectively almost single threaded - handing off from one thread to
> another via transfer_to etc.
>
> Happy to share my changes so far. Even happier if we can reconcile
> them with your noasm changes :-)

I'm happy to see someone is up to the task. As you probably noticed,
i'm not very motivated to do this port, other than helping linux folks
getting it done. To cooperate it would be much easier if you could
contact me on IRC. i'm on #squeak (on freenode) and #smalltalk (on
dalnet) as "prunedtree".

If you can't reach me on IRC, send me a mail.

regards,
prunedtree

>
> Cheers,
> talksmall


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Strongtalk-general" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/strongtalk-general?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---