Everything is a Register!

My exploitration of Exupery brings some fruits - an assembler generator using smalltalk syntax.
I don't know how this package might be useful - you decide.
I'm just make it accessible for potential users.

Generator takes a given method source code (not bytecode) and transforms it to pure asm instructions (with help of Exupery).
The way its done is like what VMMaker does, which also parses a method and creates it analogue in C.

Take a look at sample asm program:


message3
| a b c |
c := 1.
b := 2.
(b + c) ifLess: [
a := 5.
(b - 1) ifZero: [ a := 10 ]
].
^ a


First thing to remember: everything is a register not an object!
You allowed to assign them, return , make ariphmetic/logical ops.
The control flow selectors is based on processor flags (so using ifTrue/IfFalse is pointless here and will lead to DNU). All set of selectors you can find in #AsmSelectors

The example given before produces a following immediate form:


#(#(#block 1
#(#mov 1 't2')
#(#mov 2 't3')
#(#add 't3' 't2')
#(#jge #block5))
#(#block 2
#(#mov 5 't1')
#(#sub 't3' 1)
#(#jnz #block4))
#(#block 3
#(#mov #(#mov 10 't1') 't5'))
#(#block 4
#(#mov 't5' 't4'))
#(#block 5
#(#return 't1')))


It then can be processed furter with Exupery with optimization/registers allocation to get a ready to run assembler code.

I plan to add support to far calls and inlining (which is easiest part).
The call (and any special instruction) started from self as receiver.

I plan to add following:

self pragma: #inline
self pragma: #cdecl
self pragma: #apicall

- to indicate which prologue/epilogue generate for function. #inline can be compiled as standalone function only in case if you do not have any parameters on it (unary selector).

self call: #selector:with:with with: .. with: .. ...

- this one for local call of a function which must be present in same class, where parsed method resides. It can be inlined if you put self pragma: #inline in source

self inlinecall: #selector:with:with with: .. with: .. ...

- same as above, but forcing inline.

self callC: #selector:with:with with: .. with: .. ...
self callApi: #selector:with:with with: .. with: .. ...

- this one for external calls using appropriate calling convention far beyond the squeak :) You must register an Integer address for given selector in dictionary of external selectors.

A potential use of this stuff is a callbacks. I'm not decided yet how to hook with VM (some advice with Bryce is needed) , but i think that can be solved in elegant manner.
Also, i have pervasive intentions to allow hot-swapping a core VM routines, so VM will recompile itself without knowing about it :)

And moreover, in some far future i might want that full C source of VM will look like following:
int main(...)
{
buf = loadImage();
(void fn*) = buf->entryPoint;

return fn();
}

My first blog and my first entry.

This is screenshots of my current works on GLCanvas, to make OpenGL be the workhorse for squeak.

This is an image what produces squeak by default:

This is same same one, but with OpenGL activated:

as you can see, all things looks like same except that i don't draw gradients (i'll code them later when everything else will work fine).
At screenshot you can see time in ms which takes to draw full world with and without OpenGL support.
The main bottleneck of drawing stuff is displaying text and clipping (with clipping turned off it takes 3 times faster in OpenGL).