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.
11:43
One main thing when moving around references is garbage collection. I do have to mark things up and such.
11:50
The main thing is flagging based on usage. References to objects are strong when they are in fields. I may need stack depth too. Say an object is allocated in the VM. It initially starts out by being a local-only reference. The constructor of said object can potentially make it so the local-only reference becomes global. That is if the new object gives itself to a field or array, however that is handled the same anyway. My previous garbage collection idea is basically this, so this is more of a rehash. Calling a method with a reference still only makes it local usage. However once it gets assigned to an array or a field in a class, it becomes global usage. I will need markers for both situations. I suppose for an optimization I can have a stack depth for a local. However, that might not always work out too well because a bunch of objects could be allocated and then the stack depth would just jump out anyway. I suppose I may need handles for objects which potentially means double de-references. However when it comes to the handles I can just link through them all. There can also be some magic to check whether something is a handle when a garbage collection is passed through. I suppose for general stuff I will need a pool for each thread. Something being assigned to a field or array becoming global can be exposed to other threads. However anything just passed via methods does not escape the current thread. This means that when a thread terminates a garbage collection pass can be done on those objects in the thread's memory pool. I suppose for efficiency I can have generations so that if say a volatile field or final field in a class is collected because the object is collected it can be freed up.
16:35
One problem with reference counting however is that when exceptions are thrown things can get funny. However alternatively I can just have a local variable tread copy which is a copy of the locals and stack which only contains reference types. Then the garbage collector can scan the stack to determine objects referenced by locals and such. Alternatively, I can have a dynamically growing area after this for stack and locals and then just have a copy of all reference types placed on the stack. If a method for example uses 1000 locals and stack slots but only a handful are actual references then that would waste allocation if slots were needlessly duplicated. So with the slots kind of slapped on after the fact, they can instead just have a "last reference" in the slot whenever its value is changed when it is a reference. Then if its type is changed or removed, then that reference is removed from the reference list of the current method. This would then allow me to skip reference counting for local variables and instead use them for say fields and array stuff. Fields are more likely to be changed less often so that reference counting will not be too slow on it. Fields will pretty much always cause a positive reference count to be placed on an object it points to. So a kind of mark and sweep will have to clean up referenced but very indirectly. That is, if there are 3 objects: A, B, and C. B points to C and C points to B, then B and C can be cleared because nothing points to them. This means that classes could eventually be collected once they are no longer referenced by the run- time.
17:25
POIT JavaStorage.Slots needs bindings to determine which part of the stack or which local register contains the specified value. There also of course needs to be backup bindings where all values are saved when a method call is performed.
18:01
At the start of each method, I will need to have a copy of the instance and any reference arguments copied to the reference copy table. However the input arguments are technically part of the calling method's reference copy table, except for fresh stacks for new threads. So is this needed?
18:53
This Minecraft game seems interesting, however it is not open source and it also requires a 3D renderer to play. After seeing some gameplay it should be simple to clone the bits with unique-ish gameplay. It would be software rasterized since I would have no idea when I would get 3D rendering support. Since it would be software rasterized it would have to be very fast. Some Graphics2D stuff is accelerated however, so I would basically just affine transform everything when needed, etc.
19:20
Not sure which is simpler though, making a Minecraft clone or a Starcraft clone. Well Squirrel Quarrel will require lots of logic writing along with navigation meshes and AI. I suppose a clone would be called Squirrel Digger as a kind of pun. It would have to be simple, I suppose a low framerate logically and such to increase execution efficiency.
19:50
I suppose the player would have claws and such. This distracts me from my main recompiler work, but I suppose I need a break once in awhile to do something else.
19:59
Would say in this game that you are the squirrel.
23:32
I should have dimensions above worlds that way there can be tons of them for example. Not named as such however because of AWT, so I suppose Multiverse. Or maybe just a SolarSystem since these are Worlds.