January 2019 - Pharo-dev - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-dev] Purpose of VM [was: Re: Better management of encoding of environment variables]

by Eliot Miranda

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 8:02 AM Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven(a)stfx.eu> wrote: > > > On 17 Jan 2019, at 02:00, Martin McClure <martin(a)hand2mouse.com> wrote: > > > > On 1/16/19 1:24 AM, Nicolas Cellier wrote: > >> IMO, windows VM (and plugins) should do the UCS2 -> UTF8 conversion > because the purpose of a VM is to provide an OS independant faÃ§ade. > > > > I have not looked at this particular problem in detail, so I have no > opinion on whether the VM is the right place for this particular > functionality. > > > > However, I feel that in general trying to put everything that might be > OS-specific into the VM is not the best design. To me, the purpose of a > Smalltalk VM is to present an object-oriented abstraction of the underlying > machine. > > > > Thinking that way leads me to believe that the following are examples of > things that are good for a VM to do: > > > > * Memory is garbage-collected objects, not bytes. > > > > * Instructions are bytecodes, not underlying machine instructions. > > > > This works well to hide the differences between machine instruction > sets, memory access, and other low-level things. However, no Smalltalk > implementation that I know of has been able to use the VM to iron out all > differences between different OSes. > > > > I do believe that it is a good idea to have cleanly-designed layers of > the system, and that there should be an OS-independent layer and an > OS-dependent layer with clean separation. But I think it might be better to > put most of the OS-dependent layer in the image rather than in the VM. For > one thing, the image is easier to change if there is a bug, or a lacking > feature, or you're trying to support a new OS. > > > > And if it's in the image you get to do the programming in Smalltalk > rather than C or Slang, which is more fun for most of us. And, let's face > it, fun is an important metric in an open-source project -- things that are > fun are much more likely to get done. > > +100 > The VM *is* developed in Smalltalk https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328509577_Two_Decades_of_Smalltalk… > > Regards, > > > > -Martin > > > > > > > -- _,,,^..^,,,_ best, Eliot

Jan. 17, 2019

Re: [Pharo-dev] Purpose of VM [was: Re: Better management of encoding of environment variables]

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

> On 17 Jan 2019, at 02:00, Martin McClure <martin(a)hand2mouse.com> wrote: > > On 1/16/19 1:24 AM, Nicolas Cellier wrote: >> IMO, windows VM (and plugins) should do the UCS2 -> UTF8 conversion because the purpose of a VM is to provide an OS independant faÃ§ade. > > I have not looked at this particular problem in detail, so I have no opinion on whether the VM is the right place for this particular functionality. > > However, I feel that in general trying to put everything that might be OS-specific into the VM is not the best design. To me, the purpose of a Smalltalk VM is to present an object-oriented abstraction of the underlying machine. > > Thinking that way leads me to believe that the following are examples of things that are good for a VM to do: > > * Memory is garbage-collected objects, not bytes. > > * Instructions are bytecodes, not underlying machine instructions. > > This works well to hide the differences between machine instruction sets, memory access, and other low-level things. However, no Smalltalk implementation that I know of has been able to use the VM to iron out all differences between different OSes. > > I do believe that it is a good idea to have cleanly-designed layers of the system, and that there should be an OS-independent layer and an OS-dependent layer with clean separation. But I think it might be better to put most of the OS-dependent layer in the image rather than in the VM. For one thing, the image is easier to change if there is a bug, or a lacking feature, or you're trying to support a new OS. > > And if it's in the image you get to do the programming in Smalltalk rather than C or Slang, which is more fun for most of us. And, let's face it, fun is an important metric in an open-source project -- things that are fun are much more likely to get done. +100 > Regards, > > -Martin > >

Jan. 17, 2019

Re: [Pharo-dev] Better management of encoding of environment variables

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

> On 16 Jan 2019, at 23:23, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Sven, > > On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 2:37 AM Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven(a)stfx.eu> wrote: > Still, one of the conclusions of previous discussions about the encoding of environment variables was/is that there is no single correct solution. OS's are not consistent in how the encoding is done in all (historical) contexts (like sometimes, 1 env var defines the encoding to use for others, different applications do different things, and other such nice stuff), and certainly not across platforms. > > So this is really complex. > > Do we want to hide this in some obscure VM C code that very few people can see, read, let alone help with ? > > The image side is perfectly capable of dealing with platform differences in a clean/clear way, and at least we can then use the full power of our language and our tools. > > Agreed. At the same time I think it is very important that we don't reply on the FFI for environment variable access. This is a basic cross-platform facility. So I would like to see the environment accessed through primitives, but have the image place interpretation on the result of the primitive(s), and have the primitive(s) answer a raw result, just a sequence of uninterpreted bytes. OK, I can understand that ENV VAR access is more fundamental than FFI (although FFI is already essential for Pharo, also during startup). > VisualWorks takes this approach and provides a class UninterpretedBytes that the VM is aware of. That's always seemed like an ugly name and overkill to me. I would just use ByteArray and provide image level conversion from ByteArray to String, which is what I believe we have anyway. Right, bytes are always uninterpreted, else they would be something else. We got ByteArray>>#decodedWith: and ByteArray>>#utf8Decoded and our ByteArray inspector decodes automatically if it can. > > On 16 Jan 2019, at 10:59, Guillermo Polito <guillermopolito(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Hi Nicolas, > > > > On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 10:25 AM Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > IMO, windows VM (and plugins) should do the UCS2 -> UTF8 conversion because the purpose of a VM is to provide an OS independant faÃ§ade. > > I made progress recently in this area, but we should finish the job/test/consolidate. > > > > I'm following your changes for windows from the shadows and I think they are awesome :). > > > > If someone bypass the VM and use direct windows API thru FFI, then he takes the responsibility, but uniformity doesn't hurt. > > > > So far we are using FFI for this, as you say we create first Win32WideStrings from utf8 strings and then we use ffi calls to the *W functions. > > I don't think we can make it for Pharo7.0.0. The cycle to build, do some acceptance tests, and then bless a new VM as stable is far too long for our inminent release :). > > > > But this could be for a 7.1.0, and if you like I can surely give a hand on this. > > > > Guille > > > > > -- > _,,,^..^,,,_ > best, Eliot

Jan. 17, 2019

[Pharo 8.0] Build #13: 2259-INVALID-ISSUE

by ci-pharo-ci-jenkins2＠inria.fr

There is a new Pharo build available! The status of the build #13 was: SUCCESS. The Pull Request #2262 was integrated: "2259-INVALID-ISSUE" Pull request url: https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/2262 Issue Url: https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/2259 Build Url: https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/Test%20pending%20pull%20request%2…

Jan. 17, 2019

[ANN] Preparing for release. No more PRs will be accepted on P7.

by Esteban Lorenzano

Unless is a show stopper, of course! Please redirect your PRs to the branch Pharo8.0. Esteban

Jan. 17, 2019

[Pharo 8.0] Build #12: 2193-SystemNavigation-should-use-Smalltalk-globals-but-environment-since-it-has-such-instance-variable

by ci-pharo-ci-jenkins2＠inria.fr

There is a new Pharo build available! The status of the build #12 was: FAILURE. The Pull Request #2265 was integrated: "2193-SystemNavigation-should-use-Smalltalk-globals-but-environment-since-it-has-such-instance-variable" Pull request url: https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/2265 Issue Url: https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/2193 Build Url: https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/Test%20pending%20pull%20request%2…

Jan. 17, 2019

[Pharo 7.0] Build #129: Fixes Issue #2256 Recover parameter names, remove unneeded temps in Character

by ci-pharo-ci-jenkins2＠inria.fr

There is a new Pharo build available! The status of the build #129 was: SUCCESS. The Pull Request #2257 was integrated: "Fixes Issue #2256 Recover parameter names, remove unneeded temps in Character" Pull request url: https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/2257 Issue Url: https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/patch Build Url: https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/Test%20pending%20pull%20request%2…

Jan. 17, 2019

[Pharo 7.0] Build #128: 2254 leftover halts

by ci-pharo-ci-jenkins2＠inria.fr

There is a new Pharo build available! The status of the build #128 was: FAILURE. The Pull Request #2255 was integrated: "2254 leftover halts" Pull request url: https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/2255 Issue Url: https://pharo.fogbugz.com/f/cases/2254 Build Url: https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-ci-jenkins2/job/Test%20pending%20pull%20request%2…

Jan. 17, 2019

Re: [Pharo-dev] CMake

by Ben Coman

On Thu, 17 Jan 2019 at 17:20, Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > Yes, when we had the CMake files, I used to generate an Xcode project to > work on macOS. > This was very good for work/debug. > > On 17 Jan 2019, at 03:21, Ben Coman via Pharo-dev < > pharo-dev(a)lists.pharo.org> wrote: > > > *From: *Ben Coman <btc(a)openinworld.com> > *Subject: **CMake* > *Date: *17 January 2019 at 03:21:18 CET > *To: *Pharo Development List <pharo-dev(a)lists.pharo.org>, Squeak Virtual > Machine Development Discussion <vm-dev(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org> > > > On Thu, 17 Jan 2019 at 06:17, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > >> - About CMake, you may be right that makefile is better than >>> CMake but a part of the world is using >>> CMake and the net result is that we lost our effort and >>> infrastructure just to follow you. Ronie uses CMake. >>> Igor which I consider as a talented developer used CMake because >>> he thought it was the best tool >>> he should use. >>> >> >> Yes, and I disagree about the way that they use it, and for good reason. >> I have defended my use of Makefiles for a long time, for objective >> reasons. >> > > These reasons may be technically correct, but in terms of *community* > consider it similar to premature optimization. > For yourself, the priority is a faster build. Others may prioritize a > faster coding workflow using an IDE like Visual Studio. > Indeed, back when I trialed building minheadless on Windows a *primary* > consideration was that it looked easy to > use Visual Studio because minheadless had a CMake build. That led to me > contributing a couple of small fixes for win64, > but without the enticement of CMake I might never have opened that box. > > Consider then the possibility that a portion of our Windows using > community remains untapped > because their skill set is Visual Studio and they don't see an easy path > to using it with plain makefiles**. > So it depends on what is better for the *community* to optimize for: > * faster build-time for incumbents (important because thats where the > majority of contributions come from) > * broader community involvement with a workflow accelerating IDE > (important because growing the vm community is important, from which > additional core devs may arise) > > ** I do understand that plain makefiles can be used with VS, but I'm not > clear on the setup and > unsure if all the fancy intellisense tools work. > > I have also proposed good ways for using CMake (to derive a >> platform-specific header file defining available platform-specific >> features). >> > > I presume its the additional multi-build-system features that people want > CMake for, not just the using it in name only. > I can't remember the trade-off between Automake-configure and > CMake-configure. Make using CMake-configure > would make it easier to co-ordinate parallel CMake and GnuMake systems. I > think I've noticed several large > code-bases providing both (but I'd have to check) > > > But my objection to Igor's process was that he generated sources on each >> build. >> > > > >> And my objections to Ronie's use of CMake for the minheadless build are >> that a) it is slow and >> > > I'd like to quantify that. > @esteban, I remember you converted minheadless from CMake to Gnumake, but > I'm not sure if I've got that right. > Can both be run off the current HEAD for minheadless? Or I could compare > HEAD with a previous commit that had CMake. > > > I do not understand you question :) > What is now in head should be the result of my(our, with Ronie) work. > When Ronnie first announced minheadless it was pure Cmake. I thought subsequently added Gnumake files to align with the current build system, but I wasn't clear if the CMake build was still working, so a timing comparison could be done between them. cheers -ben

Jan. 17, 2019

Re: [Pharo-dev] Purpose of VM [was: Re: Better management of encoding of environment variables]

by Nicolas Cellier

To be clear, I do not militate for putting everything in the VM. I prefer a lean VM. I'm cleaning what already exist in the VM. If something is in the VM, then it should behave as we expect from a VM: uniformely. A small fix in existing code base is more efficient than a full rewrite. But if a full rewrite is wanted for other reasons, no problem. Le jeu. 17 janv. 2019 Ã 02:00, Martin McClure <martin(a)hand2mouse.com> a Ã©crit : > On 1/16/19 1:24 AM, Nicolas Cellier wrote: > > IMO, windows VM (and plugins) should do the UCS2 -> UTF8 conversion > > because the purpose of a VM is to provide an OS independant faÃ§ade. > > I have not looked at this particular problem in detail, so I have no > opinion on whether the VM is the right place for this particular > functionality. > > It is not in the VM currently, only in OSProcessPlugin (and Windows variant). If some other plugins would depend on environment variables, then it might be interesting to provide this feature as a VM service. I don't know if it is the case. Also, some platform could have other strategies like querying the Registry in windows, a configuration file, etc... So we might provide a service for the basic or multi-level policy. However, I feel that in general trying to put everything that might be > OS-specific into the VM is not the best design. To me, the purpose of a > Smalltalk VM is to present an object-oriented abstraction of the > underlying machine. > Thinking that way leads me to believe that the following are examples of > things that are good for a VM to do: > > * Memory is garbage-collected objects, not bytes. > > * Instructions are bytecodes, not underlying machine instructions. > > This works well to hide the differences between machine instruction > sets, memory access, and other low-level things. However, no Smalltalk > implementation that I know of has been able to use the VM to iron out > all differences between different OSes. > > Files? Sockets? Until the threaded FFI is consolidated, there is a category of async algorithms that we cannot easily program at image side. I do believe that it is a good idea to have cleanly-designed layers of > the system, and that there should be an OS-independent layer and an > OS-dependent layer with clean separation. But I think it might be better > to put most of the OS-dependent layer in the image rather than in the > VM. For one thing, the image is easier to change if there is a bug, or a > lacking feature, or you're trying to support a new OS. > > For supporting a new OS, I'm not sure. Having an "edit on known platform-save-resume on new platform-crash" cycles is not a pleasure. Well for certain persons, the pleasure can be proportional to the hurdle height ;) You must have the bare minimum services (GUI) running before pleasure comes back. A Smalltalk without an IDE is not superior to C with a good IDE. Trial and error is not superior to a good debugger. And if it's in the image you get to do the programming in Smalltalk > rather than C or Slang, which is more fun for most of us. And, let's > face it, fun is an important metric in an open-source project -- things > that are fun are much more likely to get done. > > Regards, > > -Martin > > For example, the first time I wrote something like Smallapack, there was no choice: it was thru user defined primitives (st80 or Objectworks). So I had to write a wrapper in C code for each function exposed, with all the marshalling of arguments in C! When came DLLCC it became more fun. But this does not apply to every library. If the library depends on tons of preprocessors definitions, macros, then we currently lack tools for performing an efficient job at image side. Some possible tools have been sketched in those mailing list, but so far, they are virtual.

Jan. 17, 2019