Which VM is suitable for which Pharo/Squeak release on which system?

Question

Is there a place (website) where i can find information on which VM is needed (minimum/maximum) for a specific Pharo or Squeak release on a specific OS?

Answer 1

I don't know if that exact information is documented, but I can try to give you a brief explanation... Even Pharo and Squeak paths have diverged a lot in the last times.

Pharo Official VM is the CogVM which is a StackVM with JIT. Then it also have StackVMs for platforms where code generation is not allowed.

The official virtual machines for Pharo are listed in http://www.pharo-project.org/pharo-download, and they work for sure from Pharo 1.2 up to Pharo 2.0. You can also have a look at the complete set of built vms in the CI server https://ci.lille.inria.fr/pharo/view/Cog/.

For older releases, Pharo (1.0 and 1.1) keeps a history of one-click distribution where the vm is freezed along with the image. You can find them in here: https://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=1299

On the other side, for Squeak, the same CogVMs should work in their latest versions, otherwise you should get an interpreter VM from http://squeakvm.org/index.html.

Hope it helps a bit

Answer 2

As @guillepolito says, the best thing today is to take the ones from the Pharo continuous integration Jenkins server (or pick a one-click).

Squeak VMs have been fading out in my practice. I keep a number of them around but as I do use Pharo, I try to build my own version from the Jenkins source as there is a lot to be learned from using those.

It is not difficult to get them built on the main platforms and at least you know what's under.

The main problem is that Eliot Miranda keeps on doing his things in his corner instead of working on a shared source three. That's the problem of having a low truck number on that.