On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 10:08 PM, aglynn42 <aglynn42@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm currently porting the Pharo VM to Solaris 11 for a specific project
> (Sparc and x86). I was wondering how many users prefer the stack VM,

On a platform with a JIT VM, no one uses the Stack VM.�� But as I
understand it, the reduced complexity of the StackVM as a pure
interpreter is easier to port and a pragmatic stepping stone.�� Perhaps
its not so critical since the cpu target is the same.�� One advantage
of having both is helping to isolate problems to the JIT or non-JIT
code.

btw, I recently started playing with the VM Simulator and found it
easier to follow execution of the StackVM to learn VM architecture,
which will help highlight JIT differences when I soon try the JIT
simulator.�� Here is some info if you want to try it...
http://forum.world.st/Exploring-the-simulator-was-Re-REPL-image-for-simulation-td4896870.html#a4898186

You might like to subscribe to the VM mail-lists...
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/vm-dev
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/vm-beginners

cheers -ben

> as for
> my own purposes the JIT is better (better concurrency when not using OS
> functions on a 128 thread machine, which is the deployment target). However
> since it wouldn't be that much extra work to port the stack VM, if there is
> interest I will do that as well. thanks Andrew Glynn