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REBOL dialect Meta available for ARM, mobile, mainframe, 32-bit and other alternative or older systems

Thanks to the new Blink virtual machine, Meta can now run on many more systems:
    
language.metaproject.frl#other
    
You can run Meta on a power-saving ARM machine, such as the new Apple Macs, small or older 32-bit machines, older versions of FreeBSD and OpenBSD, or an open-hardware RISC-V machine, MIPS or PowerPC, or an IBM S/390 mainframe or some other weird CPU.
    
Such broad platform support hasn't been available since old versions of REBOL/Core 2.
    
If you compile Blink from its source code, you can run Meta programs on many more systems, such as smartphones, 32-bit Windows, or Motorola 68000, or MicroBlaze FPGA soft-core processors.

posted by:   Kaj de Vos     6-Mar-2024/9:45:15-8:00



The Blink virtual machine is an emulator, so you will loose some speed, but Meta will still run much faster than REBOL and Red or languages such as Python.
    
In REBOL times, a large effort was needed to support so many platforms. Eventually, REBOL couldn't keep up. Red tried to address this by implementing cross-compilation support for all platforms itself. This has lead to a quite limited platform support, and Red not being able to keep up with the switch to 64-bit.
    
We are finding new ways to support many platforms, by making use of existing and developing projects and cross-compilation tools.

posted by:   Kaj     6-Mar-2024/10:02:07-8:00



I've been away from the forum for a week, so just saw this. Sounds like a great choice - I'm looking forward to seeing it work on different platforms!

posted by:   Nick     14-Mar-2024/10:30:20-7:00



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