Squeakers -
There was a recent thread on gnu.misc.discuss: "Looking for an 'assembler generator' utility" that lead to these links. Perhaps Squeak might be able to leverage this work for native code generation (and to make Squeak independent of C).
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/ "The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit helps programmers write applications that process machine code---assemblers, disassemblers, code generators, tracers, profilers, and debuggers. The toolkit lets programmers encode and decode machine instructions symbolically. Encoding and decoding are automated based on compact specifications. The toolkit is a joint project of Mary Fernández and Norman Ramsey." This work is in ML, but why not Squeak?
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/examples/xs/xs.html A simple example of The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit in action
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/zephyr/ "Zephyr: Tools for a National Compiler Infrastructure" Squeak seems like a great platform to host (incremental) compilers.
I'm not sure what the licensing terms are for these works.
http://research.microsoft.com/Users/simonpj/c--.html "The trouble is that C was designed as a programming language not as a compiler target language, and is not very suitable for the latter purpose. The obvious thing to do is to define a language that is designed as a portable target language. "
http://www.fsf.org/software/gcc/gcc.html And of course, there is always the GCC technology base.
-Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software ========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the GPL Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com
=== FORWARDED MESSAGE from Norman Ramsey nr@cs.virginia.edu ====
Perhaps Squeak might be able to leverage this work for native code generation (and
to
make Squeak independent of C).
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/ "The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit... This work is in ML, but why not Squeak?
I would be happy to work with some Smalltalk programmers to arrange for the Toolkit to be able to emit Smalltalk. A complete re-implementation of the Toolkit in Smalltalk or Squeak is not really necessary, and it may not represent the best possible use of programmers' time...
I'm not sure what the licensing terms are for these works.
Free for any purpose.
Norman Ramsey
===================== END FORWARDED MESSAGE ==================
Squeakers -
Norman Ramsey nr@cs.virginia.edu asked me to forward the above message to the list for him (since he's not on it).
Some more background: The The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit he and Mary Fernández developed is a very large effort and consists of code, data, and several hundred of pages of documentation. It includes specifications for MIPS, SPARC, Alpha, PPC, and Pentium processors. There are extensive tools with source to take those specifications to generate code (right now in C and Modula-3) for machine language interpreters, disassemblers, and more. The toolkit is written in a combination of Icon and Standard ML.
I've spent the morning looking through this work and there is a lot there. Rather than rewrite the tool that takes the specifications and generates code from them in Squeak, Norman proposes adding support to the toolkit to generate Smalltalk, which could then be used directly in various Squeak tools.
They write in their manual (Page 2):
The toolkit currently has rudimentary support for multiple languages. > For decoding applications, this support actually works; we use it both for C and for Modula-3. The support for encoding applications is only partly in place; there are lots of little C-isms lurking around the declarations of encoding procedures and the results of typed constructors, and there is only one version of the toolkit's library, which is written in C. We would be pleased to try to support users interested in other languages. We would probably ask such users to develop the library support, since that is a fairly straightforward and separable task. We would tackle the details of making the generator truly support multiple languages.
I probably won't have much time in the near future to help with this (being tied up right now with Embedded Squeak), but perhaps someone else on the list does?
To start small, it could be a great learning experience (maybe for one of Mark Guzdial's CS students?) to help Norman modify the toolkit to create a CPU simulator in Smalltalk like the one described here: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/examples/xs/xs.html as well as Squeak GUI tools for assembly / dissassembly for it.
Another fun application of the toolkit once that worked would be giving Squeak a disassembler as a "telescope" for looking at the computing world around it (as well as a "microscope" for examining its own VM code). From there it might be a short(?) step to having Squeak assemble (and run) its own machine code for those platforms.
-Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software ========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the GPL Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/squeak
Paul --
All this sounds very interesting. What do you say Mark?
Cheers to all,
Alan
----
At 7:32 PM -0000 1/2/99, Paul Fernhout wrote:
=== FORWARDED MESSAGE from Norman Ramsey nr@cs.virginia.edu ====
Perhaps Squeak might be able to leverage this work for native code generation (and
to
make Squeak independent of C).
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/ "The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit... This work is in ML, but why not Squeak?
I would be happy to work with some Smalltalk programmers to arrange for the Toolkit to be able to emit Smalltalk. A complete re-implementation of the Toolkit in Smalltalk or Squeak is not really necessary, and it may not represent the best possible use of programmers' time...
I'm not sure what the licensing terms are for these works.
Free for any purpose.
Norman Ramsey
===================== END FORWARDED MESSAGE ==================
Squeakers -
Norman Ramsey nr@cs.virginia.edu asked me to forward the above message to the list for him (since he's not on it).
Some more background: The The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit he and Mary Fernández developed is a very large effort and consists of code, data, and several hundred of pages of documentation. It includes specifications for MIPS, SPARC, Alpha, PPC, and Pentium processors. There are extensive tools with source to take those specifications to generate code (right now in C and Modula-3) for machine language interpreters, disassemblers, and more. The toolkit is written in a combination of Icon and Standard ML.
I've spent the morning looking through this work and there is a lot there. Rather than rewrite the tool that takes the specifications and generates code from them in Squeak, Norman proposes adding support to the toolkit to generate Smalltalk, which could then be used directly in various Squeak tools.
They write in their manual (Page 2):
The toolkit currently has rudimentary support for multiple languages. > For decoding applications, this support actually works; we use it both for C and for Modula-3. The support for encoding applications is only partly in place; there are lots of little C-isms lurking around the declarations of encoding procedures and the results of typed constructors, and there is only one version of the toolkit's library, which is written in C. We would be pleased to try to support users interested in other languages. We would probably ask such users to develop the library support, since that is a fairly straightforward and separable task. We would tackle the details of making the generator truly support multiple languages.
I probably won't have much time in the near future to help with this (being tied up right now with Embedded Squeak), but perhaps someone else on the list does?
To start small, it could be a great learning experience (maybe for one of Mark Guzdial's CS students?) to help Norman modify the toolkit to create a CPU simulator in Smalltalk like the one described here: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/examples/xs/xs.html as well as Squeak GUI tools for assembly / dissassembly for it.
Another fun application of the toolkit once that worked would be giving Squeak a disassembler as a "telescope" for looking at the computing world around it (as well as a "microscope" for examining its own VM code). From there it might be a short(?) step to having Squeak assemble (and run) its own machine code for those platforms.
-Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software ========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the GPL Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/squeak
I'm digging into it now. I'm making up the class assignments for the quarter today, in fact.
Mark
Paul --
All this sounds very interesting. What do you say Mark?
Cheers to all,
Alan
At 7:32 PM -0000 1/2/99, Paul Fernhout wrote:
=== FORWARDED MESSAGE from Norman Ramsey nr@cs.virginia.edu ====
Perhaps Squeak might be able to leverage this work for native code generation (and
to
make Squeak independent of C).
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/ "The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit... This work is in ML, but why not Squeak?
I would be happy to work with some Smalltalk programmers to arrange for the Toolkit to be able to emit Smalltalk. A complete re-implementation of the Toolkit in Smalltalk or Squeak is not really necessary, and it may not represent the best possible use of programmers' time...
I'm not sure what the licensing terms are for these works.
Free for any purpose.
Norman Ramsey
===================== END FORWARDED MESSAGE ==================
Squeakers -
Norman Ramsey nr@cs.virginia.edu asked me to forward the above message to the list for him (since he's not on it).
Some more background: The The New Jersey Machine-Code Toolkit he and Mary Fernández developed is a very large effort and consists of code, data, and several hundred of pages of documentation. It includes specifications for MIPS, SPARC, Alpha, PPC, and Pentium processors. There are extensive tools with source to take those specifications to generate code (right now in C and Modula-3) for machine language interpreters, disassemblers, and more. The toolkit is written in a combination of Icon and Standard ML.
I've spent the morning looking through this work and there is a lot there. Rather than rewrite the tool that takes the specifications and generates code from them in Squeak, Norman proposes adding support to the toolkit to generate Smalltalk, which could then be used directly in various Squeak tools.
They write in their manual (Page 2):
The toolkit currently has rudimentary support for multiple languages. > For decoding applications, this support actually works; we use it both for C and for Modula-3. The support for encoding applications is only partly in place; there are lots of little C-isms lurking around the declarations of encoding procedures and the results of typed constructors, and there is only one version of the toolkit's library, which is written in C. We would be pleased to try to support users interested in other languages. We would probably ask such users to develop the library support, since that is a fairly straightforward and separable task. We would tackle the details of making the generator truly support multiple languages.
I probably won't have much time in the near future to help with this (being tied up right now with Embedded Squeak), but perhaps someone else on the list does?
To start small, it could be a great learning experience (maybe for one of Mark Guzdial's CS students?) to help Norman modify the toolkit to create a CPU simulator in Smalltalk like the one described here: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr/toolkit/examples/xs/xs.html as well as Squeak GUI tools for assembly / dissassembly for it.
Another fun application of the toolkit once that worked would be giving Squeak a disassembler as a "telescope" for looking at the computing world around it (as well as a "microscope" for examining its own VM code). From there it might be a short(?) step to having Squeak assemble (and run) its own machine code for those platforms.
-Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software ========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the GPL Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/squeak
-------------------------- Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Alan Kay -
Mark Guzdial -
Paul Fernhout