STVM (SmallTalkVirtualMachine)

STVM (name will probably change in the future), is an effort to make a kind of cog-like virtual machine in Python. The idea behind is to understand well how a Smalltalk VM works, the Spur memory management works and make it able to run (probably very very slowly) Pharo/Cuis/Squeak images. The focus is not on performances, but on flexibility for quick development/modifications and runtime modifications.

State

Currently, the project is still in a PoC mode, no image is running properly, but a debugger is here to step through an image execution. Only 64bits images are supported at the moment and <= Pharo8 (no sista bytecode have been implemented).

Currently, it provides:

an image reader for 64bits images
an abstraction of low-level spur objects with quick accesses to slots/array/instvars...
an easy way to register new abstractions for low-level objects (cf. the objects classes in specials.py)
a first implementation of bytecode and an easy way to register new bytecodes
a first implementation of some primitives and an easy way to register new primitives
some plugins implementations and an easy way to register new plugins
a dumb memory allocator
no GC (currently)
a textual bytecode debugger

Install

The project includes a Pipfile, you can then just

$ pipenv install

which will create a virtualenv and grab all the required dependencies.

Run the debugger

You can just call the debug.py file with a 64bits image file as parameter.

$ python debug.py Pharo8.0.image  # or whatever image name you are using

How to

This section will quickly present how you can perform some basic operations on the VM.

Open an image file

Opening an image file is pretty forward:

from stvm.image64 import Image

image = Image('myimagefile')

Get special objects from an image

You can get a number of objects directly from an image. You have to build a VMMemory first from the image:

from stvm.image64 import Image

memory = Image('myimagefile').as_memory()

Then, you can access some objects directly:

special = memory.special_object_array
nil = memory.special_object_array[0]
false = memory.special_object_array[1]
true = memory.special_object_array[2]
...

class_table = memory.class_table
smallfloat64 = class_table[4]

# or
nil = memory.nil
false = memory.false
smalltalk = memory.smalltalk
...

You can also access to the object at an address easily

obj = memory.object_at(an_address)

# navigating to it's class
c = obj.class_

# and to the superclass of this class
sc = c[0]  # or c.slots[0]

# asking for the name
print(sc.name)

Each navigation in an object resolves to the object the slot points to.

Create a new VM instance

Creating a VM is done using new() on a VM:

from svtm import VM

vm = VM.new('myimagefile')

You can then step using the classical fetch/execute:

bytecode = vm.fetch()
vm.decode_execute(bytecode)

Register a new Bytecode

A bytecode is implemented by proposing a new class. This class needs to implement two methods and to use a special decorator:

@bytecode(555)
class MyNewBytecode(object):
  def execute(bytecode, context, vm):
    ... # here is the execution of my bytecode and the pc incrementation

  def display(bytecode, context, vm, position=None, active=False):
    ... # here is how it will be displayed in the debugger or for other purpose

Each method gets as parameter:

the number representing the bytecode that is executed (or will be)
the context in which it is executed
the current virtual machine running it
the position in the bytecode stream (for display)
the fact that the current bytecode is active (will be executed) or not (for debug purpose)

You can also register many numbers for a bytecode:

@bytecode(range(555, 666))
class MyNewBytecode(object):
  ...

This will register MyNewBytecode for numbers 555 to 665.

Create a new BytecodeMap and register Bytecode for it

Each bytecode is registed in a BytecodeMap. To create your own BytecodeMap, you need to inherits from ByteCodeMap and to explicitly says that you want to register a bytecode for this map:

from stvm.bytecodes import ByteCodeMap

class MyByteCodeMap(ByteCodeMap):
  ...

@bytecode(134, register=MyByteCodeMap)
class MyBytecode(object):
  ...

You then use this bytecode map in your VM:

from stvm import VM
from svtm.image64 import Image

vm = VM(Image('myimagefile'), bytecodes_map=MyByteCodeMap)

You can also modify (at runtime or not) bytecodes from any bytecode map and change them for a VM instance.

Register a new Primitive

Registering a new primitive is done in the primitives.py file with the @primitive decorator.

@primitive(4444)
def myprimitive(rcvr, param1, context, vm):  #  param1 depends on your original method parameter number, context and vm need to be here
  ...

You can see the primitives.py file for more examples.

Notes:

if a primitive returns None, the receiver is automatically pushed on the stack.
if a primitive requires a context activation, it has to be said in the decorator (check primitive 83 perform) for example
if a primitive returns True or False, they are automatically transformed in true or false from the VM

Register a new Plugin

Plugins are regular python module that need to be placed in the plugins directory. As for the primitives, they are receiving the arguments depending on the number of arguments of the original method. Here is how is implemented the primitiveGetCurrentWorkingDirectory function

import os
from ..utils import to_bytestring

def primitiveGetCurrentWorkingDirectory(cls, context, vm):
    return to_bytestring(os.getcwd(), vm)

Dependencies

Currently, no dependency is really needed, but some primitives and plugins requires python-xlib (so, currently only linux) and ipdb for the "dev" mode.

Tests

There is currently none, they will come in time with a refactoring of the API of everything (that grows organically).

aranega / stvm