vuby - VM for Ruby

[rolo]

Hi all,

I have been working on vuby for a month. I feel now that this should be open
source but GPL is not yet decided. I want it to be a commercially viable and
usable.

I understand matz that it should not be in C++ but since I am not language
expert like matz, My level of confusion will be very less in C++.

The details I have finalized are:

Code in C++
Initial target only win32
will have initially only interpreter but will include JIT compiler by
version 1.0 release. might as well have Ahead of Time compiler.
Will share bytecodes with java as much as possible.
will be using subversion


About license I feel it should not be GPL but an open source application
which will if bought give you right to modify but not copy. If you wish to
creates n copies you should buy n licenses.


What do you all think?


rolo

 

[Phil Tomson]

Hi all,

I have been working on vuby for a month. I feel now that this should be open
source but GPL is not yet decided. I want it to be a commercially viable and
usable.

I understand matz that it should not be in C++ but since I am not language
expert like matz, My level of confusion will be very less in C++.

The details I have finalized are:

Code in C++
Initial target only win32
will have initially only interpreter but will include JIT compiler by
version 1.0 release. might as well have Ahead of Time compiler.
Will share bytecodes with java as much as possible.

So it will be a super-set of the current JVM?

will be using subversion


About license I feel it should not be GPL but an open source application
which will if bought give you right to modify but not copy. If you wish to
creates n copies you should buy n licenses.

That's not opensource. You can't restrict copying in an opensource
license.

If you want to open source your code and allow people in inudustry to use
it then maybe you should use Ruby's current library or a BSD type license.

BTW: have you taken a look on the RubyGarden wiki. There are several
RubyVM projects going on. Check out:

http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?VirtualMachineOptions

Phil

 

[Mark Sparshatt]

About license I feel it should not be GPL but an open source application
which will if bought give you right to modify but not copy. If you wish to
creates n copies you should buy n licenses.

Using this license your application won't be open source, at least not
according to the Open Source Definition, which states that an open
source application should be freely redistributable.

http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

If you do decide to license you program in this way then I think it
would be misleading to call it open source.

What do you all think?

There are a couple of projects on Rubyforge which create vm's for ruby
that you might want to look at.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/bytecoderuby/
http://rubyforge.org/projects/yarv/

 

[SASADA Koichi]

[ Re: vuby - VM for Ruby ]
at Fri, 21 May 2004 05:12:34 +0900

Hi.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/yarv/

I moved project homepage to http://www.atdot.net/yarv/


BTW it's good idea to implement JIT compiler. But how? If you can,
please tell me some idea(or papers, or some reference) to realise JIT
compiler.

Some JIT compilers are developed(in Japan, the most famous one is shuJIT,
java jit compiler), but it's strongly depend on each processor(or OS)
architecture. I'm looking for some easy way to achieve this(Is it a magic? ).

For the moment, I will implement JIT compiler with the
'dynamic replication'(or something like this).
(from 'Optimizing indirect branch prediction accuracy in virtual machine interpreters'
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=781162&dl=ACM&coll=portal)


Regards,
ko1

 

[gabriele renzi]

BTW it's good idea to implement JIT compiler. But how? If you can,
please tell me some idea(or papers, or some reference) to realise JIT
compiler.

did you noticed libjit ?
http://www.southern-storm.com.au/doc/libjit/libjit_toc.html

 

[SASADA Koichi]

did you noticed libjit ?
http://www.southern-storm.com.au/doc/libjit/libjit_toc.html

nice
Does anyone use this library?
It's easy to use?

Regards,
ko1

 

[Phil Tomson]

did you noticed libjit ?
http://www.southern-storm.com.au/doc/libjit/libjit_toc.html

That's interesting. What a great idea: put all the JIT functionality into
a reusable library.

Thanks for the link!

Phil

 

[Robert Feldt]

gabriele renzi <[email protected]>
Fri, 21 May 2004 21:48:54 +0900 / Re: vuby - VM for Ruby




nice
Does anyone use this library?
It's easy to use?

I started wrapping it in a Ruby extension. Problem is it requires C++
linker (it uses C++ to implement exceptions) and I didn't push further
on how to integrate that mkmf et al. I think it is doable though and
would make for a nice Ruby compiling backend so please go ahead. Mind
you it currently only has an interpreter for implementing the the
"bytecode functionality" but the author told me that an X86 back-end is
expected in the 1-2 months time frame.

Regards,

Robert Feldt

 

[George Marrows]

did you noticed libjit ?

nice
Does anyone use this library?
It's easy to use?

Hmm .. it's GPL. No problem with that generally, but how good a fit is
it with the liberal licences of Ruby and other scripting languages?

As Robert pointed out a while back, there's also LLVM. It isn't
intending to do quite the same thing as libjit (it requires a
pre-compilation step), but seems to be well-established & is designed
for sophisticated optimisations. The PyPy people have been active on
their mailing list.

-- George

PS Robert/Gabriele - where *do* you find the time for all your
excellent web research?