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Date:Mon Dec 1 01:42:34 2002 
Subject:Poplog under XDarwin/MacOSX 
From:Aaron Sloman See text for reply address 
Volume-ID:1021201.01 

[To reply replace "Aaron.Sloman.XX" with "A.Sloman"]

I have had the following query about poplog on Apple OS X
from "Marcos RODRIGUES(CMS)" <M.Rodrigues@shu.ac.uk>

My reply is appended to his message. Just in case someone has more
information I am broadcasting this message with his permission.

Feel free to reply direct to him if you know of any work on poplog on
power PC, or on Apple OS X.

Aaron

From M.Rodrigues@shu.ac.uk Sat Nov 30 15:36:40 2002
Return-path: <M.Rodrigues@shu.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 15:33:42 +0000
Subject: Poplog under XDarwin/MacOSX
To: A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
From: "Marcos RODRIGUES(CMS)" <M.Rodrigues@shu.ac.uk>
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Hi,

I wonder if any of the available Unix versions would run on Mac OS X?
I have installed X11 from XFree86.org and have XWindows up and running
happily on my Mac, so I suspect that it may be possible?
Thanks for your advice,

Marcos Rodrigues.

-----------------------------------------
Marcos A Rodrigues MSc PhD MIEEE
Reader in Intelligent Systems
Computing Research Centre
School of Computing and Management Sciences
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield S1 1WB, UK
Tel: +44 (0)114 225 3176 (office), +44 (0)148 284 3617 (home)
Fax: +44 (0) 114 225 3161

Computer vision, pattern recognition and AI research (CVPRAI):
   www.shu.ac.uk/scis/artificial_intelligence
3D Imaging Technologies Ltd:
   www.3DImagingTechnologies.com

From Aaron Sloman Sat Nov 30 16:20:03 GMT 2002
To: "Marcos RODRIGUES(CMS)" <M.Rodrigues@shu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Poplog under XDarwin/MacOSX

Marcos,

Thanks for your message.

> I wonder if any of the available Unix versions would run on Mac OS X?
> I have installed X11 from XFree86.org and have XWindows up and running
> happily on my Mac, so I suspect that it may be possible?

Yes, but it will need some work to be done by someone who is familiar
with some of the innards of poplog, and will require a working poplog on
another machine.

There was a port of poplog to IBM aix on Power PC, though I don't know
if anyone still has or uses a working version of that. But the full
system. as it was in 1998, including sources is available at the free
poplog site:

	http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/new/powaix-15.52.tar.gz
		15324443 bytes

I doubt that the system calls are compatible with OS X, though I assume
the code to generate machine instructions at run time will work for the
incremental compiler.

I don't know whether OS X and AIX use the same unix assembler. If not
some changes will have to made to the portion of the system that
generates assembler files for rebuilding poplog.

The core of poplog is mostly written in pop-11, which is why a working
version is needed to recompile and bootstrap a new version. There are
also a few assembler files that may need editing and some C files
that may need editing.

For someone who understands poplog and how to port it the work could
take between a few days and a few weeks. I don't know enough to give
an accurate estimate.

I understand that OS X is based on Freebsd rather than linux, and I
don't know how much impact that difference makes. I have been told
that PC linux poplog works as it is under freebsd, which is a good
sign.

It would be nice to get poplog ported to OS X, but I don't know of
anyone who has the motivation and the time!

Is it something you'd like to work on?

It's possible that you could get a different answer by posting to the
comp.lang.pop newsgroup or the pop-forum@cs.bham.ac.uk email list, which
is linked to the newsgroup.

I could post your message if you wish.

[He replied saying yes please.]

Aaron
===
====
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/ )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
EMAIL A.Sloman AT cs.bham.ac.uk   (ReadATas@please !)
PAPERS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/ (And free book on Philosophy of AI)
FREE TOOLS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/freepoplog.html