[Openmcl-devel] M1 port: Call for funding

[Tim McNerney]

As some of you know, I have a highly capable intern waiting in the wings. I am eager to tap her before she heads off to grad school next fall. She worked with me last summer on reverse engineering the compiler’s code generator and subprims library (the doc/report is on GitHub). 

A small team promises to generate fruitful synergy. The work is nicely divisible. One person could work on the bringing up the C kernel/GC. One person could work on the compiler. There are enough “moving parts” for a third person (e.g. fasloader and cross/compilation solution). I can offer help with management, RME hopefully with tech wisdom, since he’s done a CCL port before. 

Modest funding would help indeed. At least minimum wage for the young’uns. 

There was a discussion on this list about strategy, values, and priorities a short while ago. My opinion is we should proceed with Gary Byers’ Plan A: base the ARM64 port on the IBM PPC64. I recommend our first target platform be Linux (e.g. Raspian). Neither I nor my intern have a newer Mac (though ironically both my kids do), and I don’t want Apple’s heavyweight dev tools to slow down anyone’s learning curve. RPis are cheap and (I think) widely available again. BTW, I did the final 7% of our last summer’s demo on an RPi 400. Alternatively, we’re could consider a cloud dev environment for better collaboration possibilities. 

--Tim

> On Dec 28, 2023, at 12:46, Gilbert Baumann <gilbert at bauhh.de> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have a brilliant hacker at hand who is motivated, well-qualified, and
> available to do the M1 port of CCL. She is an expert with garbage collectors
> and well-versed in runtime and compiler design. I am personally happy to
> contribute both time and a considerable chunk of the needed funding.
> 
> However, I ask for additional funds.
> 
> Some already have mentioned here that they would contribute. We can take
> rme's mentioned three month as an estimate of the needed work.
> 
> So please raise your hand if you're interested or send me a personal message
> by mail. Or catch me as gilberth on libera.chat, if you're on IRC. I'd like
> to coordinate this joined effort.
> 
> I hope that together we could pull this off and keep CCL alive and kicking
> on the Apple platform.
> 
> --
> Gilbert.
>