[self-interest] Direct memory & CPU access

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

David Goehrig wrote:

> Having a tethered environment wherein you can extend and break the SelfVM
> from inside self seems like it should already exist, so does anyone know if it
> does?  I would have thought that is a prerequisite for Klein. 

I am pretty sure such functionality is indeed a part of Klein, but it
has been a few years since I looked at it so it would be better to hear
from its creators.

In Squeak there are two projects to allow this: Exupery and Native
Boost. Both require small patches to the VM, which would also be the
case if you want to add something like this to the Self VM. An unchanged
Self VM completely isolates the bytecode level from the machine code
part. Ok, not completely - if I remember correctly you can use some
primitives to get information about generated code, but that is a "look
but don't touch" solution that isn't what you are looking for.

-- Jecel