Re: [Sablevm-user] Greetings!

[Etienne M. G. <eg...@j-...>]

Brent Fulgham wrote:
> >  Mainly, what is missing is the
> > native implementation of VM specific classes required by
> > classpath/sablepath. ...
> Understood.  I wonder if any of the comparable classes used in Japhar
> or Kaffe could be used as a starting point...

Not really.  That is the catch.  These thigns are really VM dependent. 
As SableVM's internal object layout is quite different from these vms, I
must re-implement them.

> ... You may be familiar with Kawa, which is a Scheme
> implementation on a JVM (or JPython for that matter).

Yeah.  I used some Kawa/Scheme class files to test my type inference
algorithm (the paper I presented).

> My requirements are:
> * Open Source
> * Efficient
> * Embeddable.

This VM might be OK for your needs.

> At any rate, I learned through my reading that certain functional
> programming features (like closures) are hard to implement
> efficiently on top of Java.  So, my question.

Yep.  The Java vm is pretty much tuned to execute Java code.  You would
probably need to rethink part of the vm to get native support for
closures.

> At any rate, I'm not much of a compiler hacker, but I do happen
> to have a copy of the JVM book (O'Reilly's) now, so maybe I
> can be of some help? ;-)

Of course!  It's still a little early, as I need to get a somewhat
functional vm before splitting tasks among people, but you can start
looking a little around the code, to get a feel of it.  One of the
greatest help areas would be in the sablevm/sablepath integration.  The
native code in sablepath seems to be in great need of improvement.  But,
if you are interested in vm specific coding instead, I will also need
help (to be defined;-).

I use the official vm specification (version 2), as reference for the
implementation.  I have the book, but you can find it online at:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/

Have fun!

Etienne
-- 
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Etienne M. Gagnon, M.Sc.                     e-mail: eg...@j-...
Author of SableVM:                             http://www.sablevm.org/
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