PortWishList
Last updated at 3:19 pm UTC on 14 January 2006
This page is not for port announcements.
This page is for:
- Requests-suggestions to port Squeak to any new platform, on which Squeak does not yet run. Platforms can be software (operating systems, browsers), or hardware, and:
- You can't-won't do the port for some reason: you lack expertise, hardware, and/or time.
Please add to this page only if both criterion are met. Otherwise, use one of the other port related pages: Other Squeak ports, Squeak Versions, Downloading Squeak, FeatureWishList. Also include some sensible arguments on why a port request is worthwhile; why a programmer should spend time and effort on it.
Useful guiding principle: Port Strategically
Ports should be strategic, calculated to maximize effect and influence: get influential users-niches-tasks-locations; power users; more users; more leverage, gains; etc. Porting to niches is more useful when niches are more important.
This is expressed in part as a slogan-aphorism to aid memory, not to demean. Squeakers already mostly port strategically, but making things explicit-overt aids memory.
Concrete Port Requests
Symbian
I've got this wonderful Nokia 7250i phone - it has multimedia I/O (speaker, mic, camera, graphical display), an always-on Internet connection, and the only drawback is that you have to program it in Java or under Windows in C++. It looks like a machine with plenty of memory for a Squeak image. Dunnow about the platform and feasibility, but I do know there's a crapload of Symbian-powered phones around... Cees de Groot
Seconded - Nokias running Symbian have 55% of the smartphone/PDA market worldwide, it appears. http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/viewarticle.php?id=192 The new Nokia communicators (9300 and 9500) which run the Symbian Series 80 OS http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/ are clamshell phones that are highly capable PDAs with huge screens, full qwerty keyboards, always on internet and vast amounts of memory. The Symbian operating system grew out of the old Psion EPOC OS - which apparently did have a Squeak port in 2001 http://rodablo.freezope.org/squeak/ . Would be hugely useful to run squeak on my Nokia 9300 Simon Holland.
In Java
ooh. Just had an utterly perverse thought - Squeak in Java :) What an impressive demo that would make, though, with Squeak running as an applet under one of the megalithic Java enabled browsers... I won't even sign this one for fear of retribution :)
No longer fantasy (and based on Squeak):
http://www.architur.de/deutsch/produkte/talks2/index.html
PlayStation2
The US version has a modem and an ethernet card, and is very fast. After December 2000, there should be tons of gamers out there with PS2s. This might spark interest in having gamers make games, and with Nebraska, we can have virtual gaming tournaments.
Amiga
See the new Morph OS running on PowerPC for this!!
http://www.morphos.net/
Porting Squeak to Unix, workstations, and their users, had and has payoffs, per user and system, exceeding disproportionately most other personal computer platforms. Porting to Amiga offers like gains, maybe more than porting to some palmtop-pocket systems, as done with Squeak.
Amigas are low cost, multi-tasking wonders, niche systems with some potent constituencies and uses. Amiga CPUs are Motorola 680x0s, so a Squeak port may be fairly fast and easy, or at least fastest and easiest, via 680x0 Macintosh Squeak.
Squeak is ported to the Acorn, a niche platform common in the UK and Australia, but rare in the US. Amigas are far more common than Acorns in the US, and even more popular in Germany, which also has a strong Linux community.
Numbers of Linux and Amiga users may be similar. The count of Linux users is unknown, but estimated at 5-20 million. Due to Amiga's sad, convoluted history, the counts of Amigas sold, and users, are unknown. Total sales estimates range from lows of 500,000 to highs of 9-11 million; Commodore supposedly made 7 million. The most common-likely figure is 4-5 million.
Like Unix, Amigas and their users are influential out of proportion to their numbers.
Like Unix users, Amiga users tend to be smarter generally, and far sharper technically, than average personal computer users. Amigas and their users are very strong in video and imaging. Many TV networks and movie studios use Amigas for many animation and video special effects. Such uses and users may especially benefit from exposure to, and use of, Morphic; and Morphic may benefit from exposure to such uses and users.
Like Linux users, Amiga users are among the most devoted-rabid-religious computer users, per user, more so than even Macintosh users. Many Intel-DOS-Windows users are computer naive, and some dislike their systems. Many Mac users are computer naive, but nearly all love their systems. But all Amiga users seem quite sharp, and love their systems. Amiga users deeply appreciate anything, software-hardware-organization-entity (your.org?), that supports their platform. They tend to use such products often and deeply, and are very loyal.
Like Unix users, Amiga users share software widely, often not paying for it. The Amiga software market has a long shareware and public domain tradition, and is piracy rich. This harms software sales in an already small market, but it aids any free software (Squeak), which fits an extant pirate culture.
All this may be a good way to get Squeak, and Morphic, into the minds and hearts of Amiga users, and into some influential imaging places: movie studios, other media businesses, news and entertainment.
It may especially pay to get Squeak and Morphic to computer game makers.
PalmOS
I seem to remember the idea of porting Squeak to the Palm Pilot being dismissed a while back. I can't remember exactly why. Some foolhardy folks have actually gotten a Linux kernel to boot on a Pilot, so I would think that Squeak is possible. Although memory is accessed 16 bits at a time, I think addressing is 32 bit.
Reasons to do a Pilot port: Two million Pilot users.
Reasons to not do a port:
- Cramped screen
- Too little memory
- The memory is setup as database records, which fouls up the memory manager.
- Pilot runs too sloooowwww
The first two aren't big problems, the last two are killer.
There is a PocketSmalltalk which is currently being ported to be based out of Squeak instead of DolphinSmalltalk. I find it to be fast enough for my Pilot programming tasks. But true, it isn't a full blown squeak for the PalmPilot.
I have recently purchased a PalmThree, and I am about to start developing a set of hyper-tools inspired by WikiWikiWeb for it. My main aim is to develop an environment which can capture my design ideas, which tend to be extremely non-linear.
The possibility of having a rapid prototyping environment alongside such tools is mindblowing.
To be honest, I have no idea how feasible porting Squeak to the palm is, but since I'll be developing other stuff I plan to at least look into it.
– DavidMcNicol
Well, when you think of the Pilot as a 68000 based machine that happens to only have a 2 color, limited size display, some sort of SmallTalk environment should be eminently possible. Look at
LispMe for an example of a rather complete VM living happily in a Pilot.
Granted this doesn't address issues involving the window system and related subsystems, but I'd guess that some sort of simple Workspace, Transcript, Browser and Inspector views would be relatively painless and non resource intensive.
Of course I'm useless for any of this work - while I've done a ton of porting in my time I'm utterly ignorant when it comes to language internals, and I'm even waiting for my Pilot to be replaced :) Anyway, we can dream :)
mailto:feoh@cosmic.com
As mentioned above, there is indeed some Smalltalk that runs on the Palm, that being PocketSmalltalk (http://www.pocketsmalltalk.com/). You can't do development on it like you can with a Squeak port on a WinCE or Linux PDA, but you can write Smalltalk apps that you develop on a desktop.
I'd love to see Squeak on the Palm so that I could run Swiki and take notes which I could then synch back into a main server. Dunno if there's room to run the web server, browser, and so on all in a Palm, though the new Vx does have 8 MB of RAM.
Of course, a wireless modem would also do the trick, I suppose, but wouldn't be as cool...
The Problem with a Palm port is the Palm memory allocation, you can't
allocate more than 32KB (using the palm api) per allocation.
Sebastian Wain
Squeak on SDL
It's done. See Squeak and SDL
I couldn't get a compile under Linux running on Alpha. Is 64-bit cleanness a problem? Robin Stephenson
Hello everyone, I would like to know if it's possible to run Squeak on a Linux framebuffer,there is a bunch of 486 gatering dust in a corner of my school and i would be very keen to install a minimal Linux image containing Squeak on them but i don't really want to load X on these thing.
Thanks a lot in advance
Alain Toussaint
Answer:Yes, it's possible. See the Squeak on Linux Framebuffer page.
Aaron Reichow
The best that could happen to Squeak would be to get rid of ANY OS !
No ports any more but to specific hardware platforms...
I hope to see the Squeak NOS (No Operating System) succeed as soon as possible.
C. Cartay
As I've mentioned on the mailing list, I'd dearly love to see Squeak running on the Nokia 9210 (and the Symbian OS in general) so I can persuade my boss that writing in Squeak is a practical alternative to Java ME.
Frank Shearar
