A Squeak VM written in RPython.
Prebuilt binaries
We also built for Armv7 (Raspberry Pi2, Beagleboard, ...) and Armv6 on the Raspberry Pi 1:
Although RSqueak can load images starting with Squeak 2, many primitives are not implemented and instead rely on in-image fallback code to be available and correct. This is why only a Trunk image of Squeak with the latest version of the main VMMaker branch fully works.
If you do not wish to prepare your own image, we regularily upload development images here. Be sure to grab also the relevant changes and sources files.
We have scripts for installing dependencies, building, running the
unit tests, and running JIT tests in the .build subdirectory. You
need the PyPy source tree, and the rsdl source tree. If you
already have all these, run .build/build.py. It will generate a
config file .build/buildconfig.ini where you can set your paths. You
can also run .build/download_dependencies.py to download the
dependencies automatically. You will also need a Python and a C
compiler for 32-bit compilation.
On Windows, you will have to use the C compiler that comes with Visual
Studio 2008, because newer ones crash the JIT. It suffices to just
install the Microsoft C compiler V90 plus Windows SDK
7. The
packages provided in the link install it to the default paths. If you
already have the compiler and SDK, you can also just update the paths
in .build/buildconfig.ini.
RSqueak/VM currently needs to be compiled using a 32-bit python and 32-bit
libraries for everything. The easiest way to ensure that is to use a chroot, but
you can also install the :i386 version of SDL 1.2 for your distro. In any
case, you'll need to install SDL 1.2. On 32-bit Debian-derivatives, this can be
achieved by running
apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev
If you're on a 64-bit Debian-derivative, this might work:
apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev:i386 binfmt-support
Optionally you can also install FLTK-1.3 if you want to compile a fallback file chooser when the VM is launched without image argument:
apt-get install libfltk1.3-dev
RSqueak/VM currently needs to be compiled using a 32-bit python and 32-bit clang. To do so, run
export VERSIONER_PYTHON_PREFER_32_BIT=yes
before you run any of the python scripts in the .build directory. You also
need to download SDL-1.2 as a framework (homebrew version is not tested). Check
the .travis/build-osx.sh if you get stuck anywhere.
The .build directory includes several scripts that make development
easier. Once you've setup your system for building, you can use these
to work on the RSqueak/VM.
This script executes RSqueak/VM in hosted mode, that is, it runs on
top of a Python interpreter. This is very slow (we recommend using PyPy),
but it can be useful to debug specific aspects of the VM quickly. Ideally,
you set up an image so that it executes the code that you are interested in
early during startup (DisplayScreen class>>startUp is a good candidate)
and then you add your breakpoints to the source. You can also pass commandline
arguments to the script or tweak the default arguments in the script itself.
The second script that is useful for working on issues regarding the
interpreter is unittests.py. By default it runs all tests under the
spyvm/test directory (but not those in spyvm/test/jittest/). This
is a standalone pytest script, so you can pass arguments or select single
test files as you would for pytest.
This script requires that you have already built an rsqueak binary and
that you have the C Squeak VM installed. It executes the tests in
spyvm/test/jittest/ and checks for the JIT output. We use these tests to
ensure that development on the VM does not break JIT optimizations.
This script is useful to figure out what the JIT is doing. Like run.py,
it executes the RSqueak/VM in hosted mode, but this time it also simulates
the JIT. This is even slower, but allows us to test small code snippets
without having to retranslate the entire VM. The code snippets are configured
directly in the file. When you run it, it does part of the translation process
(but only enough to execute your specific code) and then runs the code. When
the JIT kicks in, the compiled loop is shown in a PyGame window. You can then
inspect it at your leisure and when you quit the window, the code continues
executing. In order for this to work, you need to have pygame and graphviz
installed and in your PATH.
This script sets all the environment variables as if for translating the VM,
and the drops you into an interactive Python prompt. You can type terminal()
to drop into a system shell (%COMSPEC% on Windows $SHELL or /bin/sh on
Unices) which then has all the environment variables set up that you need to
do manual partial translations or similar things.