nhm@otter.hpl.hp.com (Neil McKee) (03/28/91)
Has anyone ever been able to run ParcPlace ST-80 4.0 without any windows ?
The plan is to be able to develop an application using the windows environment,
and then strip everything out, including the windows, graphics etc. for
a smaller, streamlined run-time system.
The adavantage of this is that I could then run my application without
first having to run up X11. The image could be a lot smaller too.
I have been experimenting...
If you fork a piece of code that closes all the windows, replaces
Cursor and NotifierView with dummy alternatives, kills
off processes in classes like InputState and then takes a snapshot,
(having edited the SystemDictionary so that it dosen't try and install
Screen, InputState, DisplaySurface and ImplementationFont on restart) then
the new image appears to run up OK - provided you don't *do* anything.
I did the same thing but with a piece of code that was set up to run when
the system started (dependent on Smalltalk) and the program stopped
immediately with the message ``Alarm clock'' - and not so much as a core
dump !
The interesting bit was that running the strings program on the virtual
machine did not turn up this error message. In fact, I couldn't find the
string 'Alarm clock' anywhere !
I would also be interested if anyone were able to list for me all the instances
of Process that are lurking in the system
(most of them suspended at any instant) and explain who owns them and what
they are for.
....bemused from Bristol....
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------nhm@otter.hpl.hp.com (Neil McKee) (03/28/91)
Please excuse my ignorance. I have discovered that `Alarm clock' is the error message you get if you signal a process with the unix ALRM signal. I guess I must be killing the timer signal interrupt handler in ST80. Is this all tied up in the InputState's activityProcess ? neil
nhm@otter.hpl.hp.com (Neil McKee) (04/10/91)
Just to wrap up this topic, for those of you who are interested the interrupt handlers are installed in the same primitive as the one that connects to the XServer (called during Screen install). Thus if you want to run ST80 with no windows now, you will need to get hold of the source code for the virtual machine (expensive). The good news, however, is that Parcplace told me their next release would permit running ST80 with no UI connection. neil