Speaking for myself only, gst appeals to me precisely
because it is c based: it provides a simple and elegant
(IMHO) way for the reification of other disparate works.
The addition of compilers targeted for other VMs like the
Strongtalk-VM, LVM, PortableNet, and JVM does sound
interesting, however....
Brad Watson
----- Original Message ----
From: Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout kurtz-fernhout.com>
To: help-smalltalkgnu.org
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 12:04:40 PM
Subject: [Help-smalltalk] GST on the JVM?
I know there are some other Smalltalks for the JVM in
various states of
use and licensing (Bistro, Smalltalk/JVM, Talks2,
SmallWorld, etc.)
http://www.smalltal
k.org/versions
http:
//www.robert-tolksdorf.de/vmlanguages.html
but I was wondering, now that Sun has officially announced
moving the JVM
and Java SE to the GPL, if there would be any serious
interest (especially
at the GNU/FSF level) in having GNU Smalltalk on the JVM?
Of what I have seen of the other Smalltalk for the JVM,
Bistro looks like
maybe the best candidate (especially as it even includes
language
enhancements to work with Java types and having a
free-seeming license),
but I do not think that has an active user community or any
recent work.
So anyway, just wondering what people's opinions were on
this.
In any case, it seemed like, respecting the license, that
GNU Smalltalk
could be a source of much good code for such a system and
its image. I
know right now GST is heavily tied to C etc., so no doubt
there would be a
bunch of work, perhaps best done along the lines of what
Squeak does to
generate the VM from translating Smalltalk-like code. In
that sense, GST
(or another Smalltalk) could then be used as is to develop
and bootstrap a
JVM version.
The main benefit I see of a JVM version is good
cross-platform support
without much work by the maintainer, plus an ability to draw
from Java's
libraries like for Swing widgets and Java3D. Also, it would
help address
GST's biggest weakness in the past IMHO which has always
been difficulty
getting it going in the first place from source on various
non-Unix
platforms (e.g. Windows, Mac). With a JVM version, people
could (in
theory) launch a GST application with one click in a web
browser if they
had Java Web Start enabled.
Anyway, just sounding out general interest here or whether
it would be
better to work with a different system if people don't see
that a good
direction for a GST variant and it was otherwise worth
doing.
--Paul Fernhout
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