slate gui slowness needs fixing before proceeding

[Brian Rice]

On Jun 13, 2006, at 9:21 PM, Timmy Douglas wrote:

> Brian Rice <water at tunes.org> writes:
>
>> The code that "make newboot" calls (mentioned in INSTALL) is in src/
>> mobius/vm/build.slate and then there's src/mobius/vm/bootstrap.slate
>> and so forth. src/mobius/init.slate shows the load order needed to
>> build up a working VM+image bootstrapper. The README maps out the
>> contents of the directories of the Slate repositories.
>>
>> That said, a guide to Slate's build system is certainly warranted.
>> I'll think about how to start one, but suggestions are also welcome.
>
> The main thing I was looking for would be something like this (which
> is pure guessing now since I haven't had much time to look into it):
>
> 1. vm.c and vm.h is downloaded from the tunes site (why isn't it in
>    the darcs directory instead?). It is some sort of minimal slate
>    interpreter which uses <insert something about alpha vm boot
>    image?> and reads the special slate files:
>    src/mobius/vm/bootstrap.slate and blah and outputs another vm.c
>    file.

vm.c and vm.h are only versioned in the alpha/ branch, and even then  
they are dubious since the order of C functions generated from Pidgin  
translation is somewhat non-deterministic, thereby raising the level  
of noise in version diff's. It is far easier to use wget or rely on  
the tarballs (which I automate generation of) or releases (which are  
just versioned tarballs with documentation) to automatically include.

> 2. The new vm.c file is compiled with your c compiler into the final
>    slate vm and then your image is built using that VM and the files
>    blah blah blah and saved to slate.image.

There is also a new vm.h file which is also generated from the same  
definitions used for vm.c.

By default, actually, the new files will be vm.new.c and vm.new.h  
(the NEWVARIANT Makefile variable will be introduced shortly to  
parametrize the ".new" part - right now, only the VARIANT Makefile  
variable exists to specify what to start with for the VM/image core).

Did you not read what's in the INSTALL file? "Extending Slate" covers  
the basics of this.

> It'd be nice if you could go into more details with the files used and
> what they do in a line of text if ever get time.

Please ask specifically what the INSTALL file does not address.

> The readme has a lot of files in it that don't exist anymore.

No, it does not. Please be specific about the discrepancies and I  
will address them immediately via corrective patches.

Otherwise, make sure to indicate that you are talking about, say, a  
released Slate version as compared to a current darcs repository,  
since there is a huge difference over the last several months.

--
-Brian
http://tunes.org/~water/brice.vcf

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