Re: Advice on ST-Object data-structure setup

[ken . dickey]

Basile,

Thank you much for the thoughtful reply.

> On 4/16/24 23:14, ken.dickey@whidbey.com wrote:
..
> > I am looking at porting a toy Smalltalk-in-Scheme implementation to 
> > Guile.

On 2024-04-17 00:10, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
..
> I think it depends upon your goals; I assume your x86-64 computer is 
> running some Linux OS. :

Not x86.  Aarch64 & RISCV64. I think of x86 as "rust belt". But, yes, 
Linux.

> Do you want to code in Smalltalk as quickly as possible? Then install 
> GNU smalltalk. https://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/ (it is free 
> software, a bit old, but you can study the source code).

Thanks. I have been mainly using Cuis Smalltalk for a couple of decades 
now, and am quite happy with it.

[Noter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Cuis_Smalltalk ]

> Do you care about efficiency? Then you want to generate code.

I guess I need to explain a bit.  The OpenSmalltalk runtime (transpiled 
to C from Smalltalk) is quite nice and very portable.  I did the initial 
port of the stack-interpreter VM to Aarch64 and riscv64.  I have been 
looking lately at the Bee Smalltalk VM which runs directly on x86 
without a VM.

  [ https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm
    https://github.com/powerlang/powerlang ]

My concern is that the OpenSmalltalk VM is quite complex and understood 
by very few people.  I would like a backup "taproot" for Cuis and Squeak 
Smalltalks.

I have also a long term interest in bootstrapping. microkernels, and 
multicore SOCs.

So my exploration here is really an interest in a complete bootstrap via 
mes Scheme, which is closely related in spirit to Guile.

 [ https://www.gnu.org/software/mes/ ]

To back up further,  I am an old hacker guy playing around and 
exploring.  I have Scheme runtimes in my list of sins and Guile looks 
interesting enough to play with.

HTH.

Thanks once more for the helpful suggestions,
-KenD