[Cuis-dev] Alien? ThreadedFFIPlugin?

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Philip,

There are several things here to discuss and to keep in mind.

Let me say that I am _extemely_ interested in your 
https://github.com/Phantasus/Cuis-Smalltalk-Slang/ .

I have built a few plugins in the old days. I built the JPEG plugin in 
the VM, and also an enhhanced music synth for Squeak. This was around 
2000. I took an early prototype of my vector engine, converted it to 
slang and made the slang/plugin specific prt of VMMaker work on Cuis. I 
built the plugin and called from Smalltalk. This was around 2010. I 
always wanted to split VMMaker into several packages, one of them 
PluginMaker. PluginMaker should be able to run in Cuis. But I never 
pursued this any further.

That's why I am so interested in your project. It is something I've 
wanting to have for a long time.

I'll send one or two additional answers to your message, changing the 
subject to open different discussions.

Thanks for bringing this up!

-- 
Juan Vuletich
www.cuis-smalltalk.org
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
https://github.com/jvuletich
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
@JuanVuletich



On 5/27/2020 2:17 AM, Philip Bernhart via Cuis-dev wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I recently asked on the squeak vm-beginners list about the stability
> of the external plugin interface. The general vibe from Eliot was:
>    don't! Use FFI instead!
>
> See:
>    http://forum.world.st/Stability-of-the-external-plugin-interface-td5117112.html
>
> In particular I got a response to an answer / comment:
>
>> I'm looking forward to it, but in the meantime I need to write packages
>> for Cuis Smalltalk which I need which in turn go over the slow legacy
>> Squeak FFI with no callbacks. Is there a roadmap, some public plan of
>> these implementations? I think that ideas are already around a long time
>> already and it seems that the VM development is heavily underfunded or
>> else it would already be here.
> Eliot mirandas response:
>> I don’t understand where you get the idea that Cuis has no callbacks.
>> Cuis supports Alien and has access to the ThreadedFFIPlugin and runs on
>> Cog, so it can have callbacks easily.  I suspect they’re there if you
>> load FFI and Alien.  Ask on the Cuis list.
>>
>> In a Squeak image look at Alien’s class side exampleQsort which uses a
>> callback to implement the sort function to qsort.  I bet this works on
>> Cuis too.
> So I think I never saw any Alien or ThreadedFFI in the
> Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev directories, I grepped for it. From the FFI I always
> thought that this is the old Squeak FFI implementation, am I wrong?
>
> I kind of feel like someone who lived in the geocentric worldview
> and was now told that the earth and other planets go around the sun.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Philip