Vm-dev January 2011

vm-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

38 participants
103 discussions

ffi-test-main.c fails on FreeBSD
by Gary Dunn 12 Aug '16

12 Aug '16

In conjunction with getting Open Cobalt running on FreeBSD I have been looking into the problems with SqueakFFIPrims on FreeBSD and have reached a point that is beyond my understanding. I am not sure if the fix should come from the VM side or the FreeBSD port maintainer. I needed to get source code back into the ports tree so I did a make in /usr/ports/lang/squeak. I already had the 3.9 tarball, so that just repopulated the source and did the initial build. In the "files" folder I found patch files typical for a FreeBSD port. These patch source files from a generic tarball to work with FreeBSD. The one of interest was patch-platforms__unix__plugins__SqueakFFIPrims__ffi-config which contains ----x-----x----- --- platforms/unix/plugins/SqueakFFIPrims/ffi-config.org Wed Apr 26 20:27:53 2006 +++ platforms/unix/plugins/SqueakFFIPrims/ffi-config Wed Apr 26 20:29:00 2006 @@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ case ${abi} in linux) abi=sysv;; + freebsd*) abi=sysv;; darwin*) abi=darwin;; *) abi=libffi; lib="-lffi";; esac -----x-----x----- I then had the folder work/Squeak-3.9-7/platforms/unix/plugins/SqueakFFIPrims In it is a file 00README which explains how to test FFI. It says to run ffi-test-config but I have no such file. It says to type "make" to build a test suite but the build failed. It says to try with make CPU=any ABI=libffi LIB=-lffi which also failed. I traced the problem to the gcc search paths for includes and libraries -- turns out FreeBSD only searches /usr/include and /usr/lib when the required files are in /usr/local/include and /usr/local/lib. After some fiddling I finally had a "main" to test. It failed: ffi-test-main.c failed at line 361. Here is a bit from that file, ending with line 361: ffiInitialize(); for (ul= 0; ul < 15; ++ul) ffiPushSingleFloat(fa[ul]); GO(FFITypeSingleFloat, many); f= ffiReturnFloatValue(); ffiCleanup(); CHECK(f - ff < FLT_EPSILON); I worked out the CHECK macro but could not find what FLT_EPSILON is. At that point I decided to stop and come to you for help. Where do I go from here? -- Gary Dunn, Honolulu osp(a)aloha.com http://openslate.net/ http://e9erust.blogspot.com/ Sent from Slate001

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Direct object pointers vs indirect ones pros and cons
by Igor Stasenko 26 Oct '11

26 Oct '11

Hi , all RoarVM using object tables, while Squeak VM using direct pointers for object. This is a basic element of VM design, and i wonder, how much impact it does on overall VM speed. Both variants having own advantages/disadvantages, while i think, that with good JIT an extra indirection could be almost insignificant. But having indirect pointers to objects opens quite sexy perspectives. Being able to freely choose object(s) location means that: - its quite easy to implement object memory paging (swapping between memory and disc), - place particular object(s) into special memory location (good for FFI, object pinning etc) - #become: is O(1), instead of O(heap size) The downside of indirect pointers is, of course, a higher memory traffic, which directly impacts all operations everywhere. What else? I'd like to know, what you thinking about it, and why Squeak VM, in particular, using direct object pointers? What are this choice based on? I'd like to know. Maybe i missing something. -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

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Profiling and delay accuracy
by Andreas Raab 06 Aug '11

06 Aug '11

Hi Folks - For a long time now I had this feeling that MessageTally reports pretty bogus results in many situations without being able to precisely track down why this would be the case. Today I was looking at primitiveResponse() and, much to my surprise, noticed that the checkForInterrupts() that used to be there for years is gone (see Squeak3.6 for example which still has it). The sole reason for this check was to get both high delay accuracy and good profiling behavior. Consider this example: fc := FormCanvas on: Display. MessageTally spyOn:[ 1 to: 100 do:[:i| fc fillColor: Color white. fc printString. ]. ]. Using 3.6 this will be measured correctly as: **Tree** 87.5% {243ms} FormCanvas>>fillColor: |87.5% {243ms} GrafPort>>fillRect:offset: | 87.5% {243ms} GrafPort>>copyBits 12.5% {35ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printString 12.5% {35ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printStringLimitedTo: whereas the 3.10 reports it as **Tree** 99.6% {670ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printString 94.9% {639ms} primitives 4.6% {31ms} FormCanvas(Object)>>printStringLimitedTo: I think you can see the problem and just imagine what this does to any cumulative results. I also wonder what that change does to platforms that don't have high-resolution asynchronous timers. This used to be the one place where we would catch timer changes at high resolution and unless the platform forces high resolution timer interrupts asynchronously (by resetting the interrupt counter) we must be loosing a lot in terms of delay accuracy. (it just so happens that the Windows VM *does* do asynchronous timer interrupts so I never noticed this but I'm very curious about the difference on Linux which typically still has pretty bad timer granularity). Any opinions? My feeling is that the timer check should go back in for all of the above reasons. At the very least a quickCheckForInterrupt() is required but I actually think putting the full check back in is worth it. Cheers, - Andreas

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4.0.3.2196 for Unix
by Ian Piumarta 08 May '11

08 May '11

Folks, Source and binaries for Linux/i386, Darwin/i386 & Darwin/PPC now available. (Solaris, NetBSD and FreeBSD still at 3.11.3 until I get my kvm working again.) http://squeakvm.org/unix Enjoy! Ian Major changes since 3.11.3.2135: Generated sources rebuilt from VMMaker-dtl.169. Re-enabled MIDI support via ALSA on Linux. Broken locales should no longer cause line ends to go missing during copy and paste. Add support for "platform source version" primitive. Remove debugging beep on first clipboard copy under X11. Allow fully-qualified pathnames when loading modules. Bundle FreetypePlugin with source and binary releases. Various fixes for 64-bit cleanliness (many thanks to Dave Lewis). Add microsecond clock support. Fix launching from a menu under KDE. Fix --CFLAGS option in configure script. Serial plugin invalidates cached port names on close. Better handling of symlinks when looking for absolute path to VM binary.

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Portability problems: compiler flags
by Aleksej Saushev 12 Apr '11

12 Apr '11

Hello! Squeak uses highly unportable flag "-mno-fused-madd". It isn't present in many systems, even those using GCC, since many systems use older compilers. Also, why do you build fdlibm? It is old stuff that works not so well, we have better libm. Is there a way to use our libm? No "-mno-fused-madd" in our compiler. --- unix/plugins/FloatMathPlugin/config.cmake.orig 2011-01-25 04:56:17.000000000 +0300 +++ unix/plugins/FloatMathPlugin/config.cmake 2011-01-25 05:15:59.000000000 +0300 @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ # GCC optimizations break fdlibm so disable them for now. IF (CMAKE_COMPILER_IS_GNUCC) - SET (LIBM_CFLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} -O0 -mno-fused-madd") + SET (LIBM_CFLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS}") ELSE () SET (LIBM_CFLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS}") ENDIF () -- HE CE3OH...

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[Cog] cmType ~= CMMethod
by Mariano Martinez Peck 01 Apr '11

01 Apr '11

Hi Eliot. I am having some asserts failing while running my tests. Most of them during the sweep phase of the GC. The two places where it fails is in - NewCoObjectMemory >> lastPointerWhileForwarding: oop if fails the assert: self assert: (coInterpreter cCoerceSimple: methodHeader to: #'CogMethod *') cmType = CMMethod. In different runs, the cmType answer me 1 (CMFree) - NewCoObjectMemory >> lastPointerOf: oop recordWeakRoot: recordWeakRoot "<Boolean>" and it fails in the same assert: self assert: (coInterpreter cCoerceSimple: methodHeader to: #'CogMethod *') cmType = CMMethod. In different runs, I got values 0 or 6. BTW....seing: initializeCogMethodConstants CMOpenPIC := 1 + (CMClosedPIC := 1 + (CMBlock := 1 +(CMMethod := 1 + (CMFree := 1)))) I cannot understand how can I get 0 or 6.... Anyway, my question is if you have a clue of what can be happening so that those asserts are failing. I am using Objects as methods, but normal objects (subclasses of ProtoObject). Thanks in advance, mariano

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Sounds baaad sounds
by Igor Stasenko 03 Feb '11

03 Feb '11

Funny thing .. Sound package contains a code, which used by VMMaker for generating sound plugin.. which means that depending on the hacks and on forks (Pharo having different Sound package version than Squeak), you will end up with different VMs.. Sounds cool yeah? :) I propose to carve out all VM-specific behavior from this package and put it into separate package like VMSound, or or just directly into VMMaker, because in current state this sounds baddd :) -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

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Cog VMMaker dependencies
by Igor Stasenko 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

Hello i am trying to put everything together and load all VMMaker stuff into clean image, and found that it depends on BochsIA32Alien class, defined in Cog package. But this package have no public repository and can be found only in vmmaker image which saved by Eliot in SVN repo :( Guys, do you mind if i copy this package to VMMaker repository on squeaksource, so then we could have an official place where to download it. Because clearly, we need to make sure that VMMaker could be loaded into fresh image from scratch, and in order to do that, we need some persistent public place where we can download all packages from. -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.

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Android Squeak VM: which image?
by Dimitry Golubovsky 31 Jan '11

31 Jan '11

Hi, Thanks for answering my questions regarding tablet choice, now I am doing my hardware research ;) How was the image obtained for the Android port: was it just a Squeak image available at the time cut into 1MB pieces, or were any specific corrections made prior? Might it work with more recent Squeak image? Is it worth trying with a Pharo-based image? (I did my prototype in Pharo) Thanks. -- Dimitry Golubovsky Anywhere on the Web

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Cocoa Cog VM with CMake running
by Esteban Lorenzano 31 Jan '11

31 Jan '11

Hi, I just wanted to tell you I finished a CMake generator for Cocoa Cog VM (an initial version). This version is stuck in a version previous of Eliot's work (and needed some tweaks on couple of plugins), but at least... is there :) Now I'm working on integrate it with latest Eliot work and Igor CMake versions. Cheers, Esteban

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Vm-dev January 2011