[Self-interest] future of the Self VM

[Russell Allen]

> On 3 Aug 2021, at 1:30 pm, Jecel Assumpcao Jr <jecel at merlintec.com> wrote:
> Russell Allen:
>> "Inverse Klein" idea: compile code to vector and run it
> 
> In Squeak there was the Exupery project by Bryce Kampjes that did just
> that.
> 
> http://www.squeaksource.com/Exupery.html
> 
> Guillermo Adrián Molina used this technology to implement a complete
> Smalltalk called Huemul.
> 
> https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-540-89275-5_4
> 
> https://www.guillermomolina.com/en/18-castellano/proyectos/huemul-smalltalk
> 
> Igor Stasenko created the NativeBoost project for Squeak/Pharo which
> allows you to extend a method with native machine code and call that.
> 
> http://www.squeaksource.com/NativeBoost.html

I knew about NativeBoost, it seemed really promising but the Squeak/Pharo people seemed really to just want it to be a way to interface native libraries, and went instead with something more targeted and less flexible.

My code was working quite well, the one thing I wanted to implement and didn’t get round to was a way to callback into the VM. I think from memory I was planning to send a Unix signal which would be picked up by the VM, but you can’t send a signal from a unix process to itself, so I needed some other mechanism and never got round to it.

From the look of it none of the projects you mention above went anywhere sadly. It would be nice to know what the issues were.

Russell