[VM] New VM Release

Hi all,

We wanted to share a new VM release, aimed at Pharo 14 images.

https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo-vm/releases/tag/v12.0.2-beta

Besides many cleanups and small improvements, this enables a soon-to-come stack overflow support.
For those interested in more details, I allowed myself to generate a digested changes log with some AI.

Those using zeroconf will see this change effective immediately.
Launcher users, do not forget to update your VMs.

Please consider this is a beta release.
Do not hesitate to communicate any issues you may find.

Cheers,
Guille Polito

Highlights

This is a major release featuring:

• Frame unification and stack management improvements, delivering substantial interpreter and execution engine cleanups.
• RISC-V JIT support, expanding platform coverage and future-proofing VM development.
• New memory management capabilities, including direct old-space allocation and numerous GC and allocation improvements.
• Extensive compiler and Slang/C translation work, with many correctness fixes, new tests, and improved inspection tools.
• Platform and build modernization, including SDL updates, improved CI, cross-build support, and updated third-party dependencies.
• Large-scale cleanup and refactoring efforts across the VM, interpreter, Cogit, PICs, and infrastructure.

VM Runtime, Interpreter & JIT

• Frame unification (#602)
• Improvements in stack management (#710)
• Initialize stack pages during simulation (#853)
• Robust cannotInterpret: in the interpreter (#641)
• Simplify stack-to-register mapping API (#627)
• Improve and use unreachable (#630)
• Clean up Interpreter State (#658)
• Void the instructionPointer systematically when creating a base frame (#914)
• Cleanup make base frame when compacting code (#943)
• Fix meta try primitive (#968)
• Feature: thisProcess JIT (#1037)
• OpenPIC / Megamorphic IC work (#1067)
• PIC Cleanup (#889)
• Cleanup PIC (#1021)
• Allow Cogit>>#mnuMethodOrNilFor: to return non-CompiledMethod oops (#936)
• Remove entry alignment (#934)
• Mark debugging overrides in Cogit as #debuggerCompleteToSender (#1035)

Memory Management & Garbage Collection

• Do not unlink all sends on GC (#503)
• Improving perm space P12 (#621)
• Added new primitive for allocating directly in the old space (#701)
• Adding test to test Ephemerons in the Old Space (#702)
• Clean special object array a little (#640)
• Collapse allocation logs (#913)
• Only scan the class table if become: was performed to an active class object (#1023)
• Set the size of larger indexable objects allocated in young space (#976)
• Fix LargeIntegers segfault on allocation failure (#1040)

Compiler, Slang & Code Generation

• Reject reserved words (#613)
• Rename reserved words: selectors, locals and instance variables (#624)
• Rename conflicting identifiers (#646)
• Validate if locals/args exist when adding a type declaration (#603)
• Check structs' instance variable type declarations (#607)
• Redundant type declaration linter rule (#662)
• Fix cast tests (#660)
• Fix and test inlinings with ifs and right shifts not translated (#667)
• Add tests and fix incorrectly generated inlined C code from CCodeGenerator (#666)
• C AST translation right-side parenthesis in expression (#685)
• Add a palette with the C translation of any inspected C node (#686)
• Add C source code inspection tab for TParseNode (#687)
• Created new package CAST-Tests (#679)
• Better dead code elimination (#915)
• Fix issue #822: remove unused argument for functionPointerFor:inClass: (#956)
• Fix CASTParserTests>>#testParseSizeofTypeInt (#965)
• Refactor inlining code and add tests for it (#987)
• Suppress the old inlining implementation (#1000)
• Fix small bug related to method inlining and comments (#957)
• Remove the idea that we might have a different bytecode set (#927)
• Add a dumb isNotNil implementation (same as notNil) (#890)

Platform Support & Portability

• RISC-V JIT Support (#932)
• Initial work on W^X for Linux systems (#905)
• Add Windows support for non-ASCII filenames in basicImageFileExists (#922)
• Fix the Windows build (#938)
• Windows improvements (#1062)
• Make next non-blocking on Linux (#1065)
• Support x86_64 musl cross-build smoke testing with QEMU (#1069)
• Updating versions for OSX (ARM / Intel) (#937)

Build System, CI & Dependencies

• Update SDL (#615)
• Remove strange SDL2_copy CMake target (#620)
• Forward VM build parameters from CMake (#654)
• Use Pharo 11 on CI (#669)
• Use Pharo file server @ Inria (#868)
• Extract full semantic version from git (#870)
• Remove old versions of libgit in new builds (#902)
• Update CMake minimal version for recent CMake compatibility (#945)
• Updating LibGit2 build to use new OpenSSL and libssh2 (#1033)
• SDL2 2.32.6 update for Windows and macOS (#978)
• Fix OBS build (#981)
• Add FEATUREJITSIMD option (#966)
• Fix Linux compilation error (#1053)

Plugins, I/O & Networking

• New file plugin (#1024)
• Fix missing socket accept on Pharo 12 (#1005)
• Move warnings to debug when loading plugins (#675)

Testing & Simulation

• Small stack interpreter tests (#690)
• Simulator fixes (#1025)
• Fix VM tests: specialObjectsArrayAddress (#1056)
• Fix broken GC tests (#917)
• Fix some Slang tests (#891)
• Redo ML localization test fixes (#1064)

Bug Fixes

• Resolved UUID primitive bug (#610)
• Make instantiateClass more robust when format is missing (#629)
• Revert #629 (#631)
• Revert the revert and restore primitive failure handling (#634)
• Add getClass for Pharo 12 compatibility (#651)
• Fix warning absolute value (#782)
• Fix load 32 bits (#920)
• Fix headerAt:put: (#919)
• Fix sign coercion warnings (#950)
• Fix int boxing/loading (#1066)
• VM version primitive (#1050)
• Profile data extraction from PIC cache tags (#969)

Refactoring, Cleanup & Maintenance

• Added comments and renamed methods during dojo (#623)
• Fixing categorization P12 (#626)
• Updating P12 with changes from P10 branch (#733)
• Forward porting P10 → P12 (#851)
• Forward port 10 → 12 (#893)
• Forward port 10.3.3 → Pharo 12 (#903)
• Realign P12 branch to P10 (#1057)
• Removing duplicated code (#857)
• Cleanups and improvements (#871)
• Lots of cleanups (#874)
• Cleaning (#881)
• Cleanup dead code (#961)
• Cleanup warnings (#906)
• Fix warnings (#1034)
• Remove debugging code (#911)
• Remove unused variables (#930)
• Normalize variable (#897)
• Remove gcMode because getGCMode is used (#963)
• Remove ceShortCutTraceStore: and simulation guard users (#960)
• Simplify signal handler space calculation using POSIX SIGSTKSZ (#910)

Documentation & Developer Experience

• README: Developer documentation is not a link (#637)
• Update README (#878)
• Add default values to --help parameters (#872)
• Fix typos in comments (#958)

New Contributors

• @Mathilde411
• @LucFabresse
• @ivojawer
• @Gabriel-Darbord
• @iglosiggio
• @rolandbernard
• @fouziray
• @kilian-kier
• @NathanMalenge
• @FedeLoch
• @Ducasse
• @takano32