MrJoltCola wrote:
I doubt there is much that could not be mapped to Parrot, but Parrot does things that would be impossible to map directly back to a CPU.
Currently I am only thinking of just a CPU X to Parrot asm translation, not the reverse, and this is just an attempt to get to a consolidated Virtual CPU (VPU?) model, and a single language syntax or state machine to deal with. All tools from that point on would work on a common model of the same virtual cpu. I could pick any virtual CPU and that would be Ok because it would not have to be run anywhere to be able to analyse structure and purpose, but Parrot would then have the potential benifit of having additional tools developed for understanding program structure. After all, why build something nobody else could use? Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but as I feared the Parrot virtual CPU is highly slanted towards a very different goal.
I'm not sure why you'd want to do this, though. We don't have any application base to speak of. :)
I'm not looking for any Parrot apps to run, but the extension of that same capability could eventually lead to extra debugging and bitecode runtime support, but thats not my primary aim. The more near-term benifit might have been a set of "anything to Parrot" translators, which in theory could then be used to convert all your favorite binary applications to your favorite new runtime VM. Then you could have lots of applications! (lol) This part of course was meant as a joke, but then Parrot itself started as a joke did it not?
In any case I will be interested to see your project move forward and become a reality. Perl has been a wonderful language, for so many purposes, and I believe with this project in the works there will be a lot more of that to come in the future as well.
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Steve Coleman Johns Hopkins University / Applied Physics Laboratory
