(retry) Re: http://www.santafe.edu/projects/swarm/release/

[Theodore C. Belding]

[I'm including Nelson's message this time...]

This should be a FAQ. :)  Here's an email that Nelson sent out earlier.
There is no Objective C available for any PowerPC or POWER (RS/6000)
platform.  That includes MachTen PPC, Linux, AIX, and Power Macs.

See http://www.batech.com/~dekorte/Objective-C/objc.html for more info (I
can't get through there right now).
-Ted

>>From address@hidden Thu May 30 01:29:59 1996
>Date: Wed, 29 May 96 23:22:38 MDT
>From: address@hidden (Nelson Minar)
>To: address@hidden (Lael Parrott)
>Cc: address@hidden
>Subject: Re: Linux for Mac available real-soon-now
>Sender: address@hidden
>Precedence: bulk
>
>>Please fill me in -- what exactly is the problem with AIX systems and
>>Objective C?
>
>I'm not able now to find a good reference. If you're seriously
>interested in pursuing this, let me know and I can dig through old
>mail archives.
>
>Briefly, though, gcc's implementation of Objective C uses a weird hack
>in order to do message dispatch quickly. In particular, it requires
>the use of __builtin_apply, a lisp apply equivalent for C that fakes
>up a function call dynamically. It's a neat trick, but unfortunately
>it's never been ported to PowerPC architectures. Worse yet, last time
>I heard the gcc AIX maintainer refused to try to port it, saying that
>it was impossible and a bad idea.
>
>The situation is very frustrating. One possible workaround is to use a
>set of patches that someone has made that seems to at least hide the
>problem, I think by allocating big buffers so data is pushed into a
>"safe" spot. These patches are not recommended by the patch authors,
>much less the Swarm team. Other solutions take more time and
>expertise: either port __builtin_apply to the PowerPC, or modify the
>gcc-objc runtime to not require __builtin_apply.
>
>Again, if munging with stack frames is your idea of a good time, drop
>me a line and I can give you more technical information.

At 1:10 PM 6/3/96, L. Thomas Vest, Jr. wrote:
>Hi,
>
>While visiting SFI last month (Cultural Modeling Week), I met with Eric
>Carr and discussed running SWARM on a Mac 8500. He informed me that
>someone in Italy had succeeded in getting it to run using MachTen 68k. I
>am now in possession of both MachTen PPC and 68k, but I am concerned: the
>Tenon/MachTen tech expresses doubt that (any) standard Objective C will
>run on MachTen.
>
>I'd be grateful for a little reassurance, if someone can provide it up
>there --otherwise I'd be grateful for contact info so I can get in touch
>with the clever Italian.
>
>Thanks in advance for the help,
>
>Tom Vest
>USC School of International Relations

--
Ted Belding                  address@hidden or address@hidden
University of Michigan              Program for the Study of Complex Systems
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~streak/

--
Ted Belding                  address@hidden or address@hidden
University of Michigan              Program for the Study of Complex Systems
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~streak/