ESUG 2017 First Name: John Last Name: O'Keefe Title: VA Smalltalk Product Update and Roadmap Type: Talk Video: https://youtu.be/7jAFE1WBwEQ Abstract: VA Smalltalk continues to evolve, and I'm going to share the current state of this evolution. During this last year, we have all been working on 64-bit support. I will be describing this new capability (and some of the pitfalls along the way). And, as usual you will see the “Roadmap to the Future” for VA Smalltalk. Bio: I have been developing software for over 50 years and Smalltalk for over half that time.. I joined the original IBM Smalltalk prototype team in 1990 and was a founding member of the IBM VisualAge Smalltalk development team. I was Team Lead and Chief Architect of IBM VisualAge Smalltalk from 1997 to 2007. In February 2007, I joined Instantiations to lead the VA Smalltalk development team. I am currently the CTO and Principal Smalltalk Architect (aka Old Dude Who Knows Smalltalk) focusing on future product architecture and development. I live in Durham, NC and work in Raleigh, NC.

1. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
25th
ESUG Conference
Maribor, Slovenia
September 6, 2017
VA Smalltalk Update
**including**
Exploring the Dark Underside of 64-bit Support
John O’Keefe
Chief Technical Officer
Instantiations, Inc.

2. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Agenda
• 2017 Release Content
• 64-bit Support
• Next Release
• Q&A

3. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
2017 Release
V9.0 available soon for Windows

4. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
V9.0 Content
• Windows only
• New 32/64-bit VMs
• Fully backward compatible
• Image adaptation for 64-bits
• Dual, but shared, Environments
• Dual Installers

5. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
V9.0 Contents
Minor Enhancements
• Grease and Seaside
• Currency
• Cryptography
• Elliptic Curve support added
• SUnit Browser
• Performance improvement for large test sets
• Scintilla
• Full Code Assist support in Workspaces for 25+
languages
• HTTP multipart forms
• Optimized memory usage and speed

6. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Made 64-bit Difficult?
Beyond writing new VMs
• Bootstrap
• Serialize for everyone
• Expose the magic
• Say what you mean
• Managing elastic OSStructures
• I don’t have my source

7. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Made 64-bit Difficult?
Bootstrap
• Problem: All I have is a 32-bit image
• Solution:
• Mark image file as 32- or 64-bit
• Provide multiple image file loaders
• 32-bit image loader for 32-bit VM
• 32-bit image loader for 64-bit VM (dynamic conversion)
• 64-bit image loader for 64-bit VM
• Depend on #preStartUp/#startUp for fixup of converted
image
• Offline 32-to-64 bit conversion tool available

8. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Made 64-bit Difficult?
Serialization for everyone
• Problem: Serialized data (files and library
objects) must be sharable between 32- and 64-bit
images
• Solution:
• All serialization is 32-bit by default (compatibility mode)
• If 64-bit serialized object is required; temporarily turn off
compatible mode
• 64-bit serialized object cannot be read by 32-bit image

9. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Made 64-bit Difficult?
Expose the magic
• Problem: Images are littered with magic
numbers conforming to 32-bit representations
• Example:
• 4 (size of pointer) ➔ System vmPointerSize
• 12 (size of object header) ➔ Object objectHeaderSize
• 20 (size of Association) ➔ self associationSize
• Etc.
• Solution:
• Find and fix (parameterize)

10. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Made 64-bit Difficult?
Say what you mean
• Problem: PlatformFunction parameter and
returnValue definition semantics are too loose
• Example: #uint8, #uint16 and #uint32 widened
to 32-bits
• Solution:
• Examine ALL PlatformFunction definitions and make
parameter and returnValue types explicitly correct

11. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Made 64-bit Difficult?
Managing elastic OSStructures
• Problem: Static OSStructure definitions (mapping
C structs) need to be dynamic
• Field sizes may change for 64-bit
• Field order may change for 64-bit
• Number of fields may change for 64-bit
• Field alignment may change for 64-bit
• Solution:
• Explicitly identify field sizes, order, and occurrence
• Change field references from offset based to field name
based
• Compute offsets for field names when starting image
• Completely backward compatible

12. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Made 64-bit Difficult?
I don’t have my source
• Problem: Method source code is hidden (3rd party
add-ons) or lost
• Solution:
• Obtain source code from 3rd party providers
• Dynamic 32-to-64 bit conversion may work at runtime
• Immediate access to additional memory
• Doesn’t handle access to 64-bit DLLs
• Run only 32-bit images

13. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
What Helped with 64-bit?
• Early Customer Access Program
• Invitation only to limit overhead
• Small number of high-impact customers
• Beta Releases
• 3 public betas with significant number of participants
• Exposed problems that in-house testing couldn’t find

14. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Looking to the Future

15. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Next Release
• UNIX 32/64 bit VMs
• Short development cycle
• Beta program expected to start soon
• Unicode

16. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
How Do You Get VA Smalltalk?
• Download evaluation copy
• http://www.instantiations.com/products/vasmalltalk/download.html
• Buy development licenses
• http://www.instantiations.com/products/purchase.html
• Download development build/beta
• Announced in VA Smalltalk Google Group or by email
• Be a committer on an Open Source project
• http://www.instantiations.com/company/open-source.html
• Work for an educational institution
• http://www.instantiations.com/products/academic-license-
program.html

17. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Contact us
• General information
• info@instantiations.com
• Sales
• sales@instantiations.com
• Support
• support@instantiations.com
• Me
• john_okeefe@instantiations.com

18. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Thank you for your attention
Questions?

19. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Backup

20. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Future Releases
Candidate Items
• Web interface
• Web services debugging support/doc
• Web services tooling improvements
• Validating XML parser
• GUI Look-and-Feel
• GTK+ 3.x on Linux
• Windows Common Controls additions
• Back-port widgets from add-ons (ex: UML Designer)

21. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Future Releases
Candidate Items
• Infrastructure
• Consolidate product settings using Settings Framework
• Settings Dialogs to complement Settings Framework
• Consolidate product logging using Logging Framework
• Middleware
• GLORP Programmer’s Reference
• MQ currency
• TCP/IP V6
• 0MQ

22. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Future Releases
Candidate Items
• Development Tools
• Redesigned Change Browser & Merge Tool
• C API wrapper generation tool
• Security
• ‘Full’ security framework -- OpenSSL 1.0.2 or later
wrappers
• Performance and Scalability
• Parallel garbage collection
• Class library performance hotspots
• Integrate KES/Stats goodie for object monitoring
• Platform
• Windows Services control moved from C to Smalltalk

23. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Future Releases
Candidate Items
• External Interfaces
• JNIport (currently available on VAStGoodies.com)
• .NET/C#
• Other
• Class Libraries
• Collection hashing policies
• Sorted collection sorting policies
• Other
• We’re always looking for suggestions

24. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Open Source Project Committer
• Instantiations will donate a perpetual VA Smalltalk
license
• to committers
• working on non-commercial open source project
• Hint: release something to VAStGoodies.com
• No charge
• Details
• http://www.instantiations.com/company/open-source.html

25. Copyright © 2017 Instantiations, Inc.
Academic Licenses
• Accredited educational institutions
• Teaching staff
• Students
• No charge
• Details
• http://www.instantiations.com/products/academic-license-
program.html