Re: About gcj present and future

[Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com>]

On 01/08/2013 05:26 AM, Ernesto wrote:

> I'm new on this mailing list and new to gcj and I find it fascinating.
> I have several questions about gcj present and future:
> 
> 1. Are there new developments on it? Support for Java 7 language new
> features? (like automatic resource management or the new List<>()
> diamond constructors?)

GCJ doesn't have a Java source compiler, so it doesn't support any
particular Java source features.  It relies on some other Java ->
bytecode compiler .  GCJ is behind in terms of things like JSR 292,
(Supporting Dynamically Typed Languages on the Java Platform).

> 2. I installed it in a Xubuntu linux box and Swing works fine on it,
> but in Mac OS X Swing simply does not work. Is any Mac related work on
> it?

I don't think there is.

> 3. I read somewhere that gcj is in "active maintenance mode". Does
> that mean that we can trust it will be available in next versions of
> gcc? Or is there some plan to discontinue it? I want to start an app
> on it and I would want to know it will be available for several years
> now (CNI interface is a very amazing piece of technology).

Well, yes.  Good question.  I'd love to restart active development of
GCJ, but OpenJDK is free software and is way ahead in terms of
features.  GCJ has some advantages, but so far these haven't been enough
to persuade people to work on it.  If we don't do something soon it
may be too late.

Andrew.