2016/02/04

DISCLAIMER: These notes are from the defunct k8 project which precedes SquirrelJME. The notes for SquirrelJME start on 2016/02/26! The k8 project was effectively a Java SE 8 operating system and as such all of the notes are in the context of that scope. That project is no longer my goal as SquirrelJME is the spiritual successor to it.

14:07

I want a nice way to handle instructions during making them visible. Something that will be done in a safe manner.

17:38

Suppose today I am taking a break and attempting to clean my room instead.

19:53

Here is an idea for the bootstrap environment. Instead of having byte code which is of course fast and efficient, the bootstrap can just be quite literally a source based interpreter of Java which performs no actual compilation into byte code. There could however be a kind of intermediate code but not exactly as byte code. It could be used with my own implementation of the class library.

19:58

The result would then be a kind of compile on demand sort of with source code. If it understands Java 8 source code it can then act as a Java 8 virtual machine of sorts. There would however be a speed penalty though.

20:00

It would be interesting, however the most likely choice that would be more efficient would be to write an actual compiler and virtual machine. However for a bootstrap environment which might be run-only (with no compiler part of it) , well maybe not. In either case, the bootstrap virtual machine could handle Java source code to compile the compiler (written in Java) and then use that compiled code to run the bootstrap to build the OS. However, really the only thing that would need a bootstrap is the VM and the compiler. A standalone bootstrapped compiler would compile the code that is required for running. The VM would run class files as normal Java does. So essentially they would be one bit because the bootstrap VM will need a compiler anyway. Then my own compiler could for example target C instead of Java byte code so that Squirrnix can be compiled and built without needing a Java run-time or compiler at all, it would just need a C compiler which would have to be somewhere. So you would need either a C compiler or a Java run-time with a compiler.

20:19

I believe I need to make the ProgramInstruction a bit simpler by splitting off the field stuff so that it is independent from it.