Use gcj to compile for avr/embedded device

Use gcj to compile for avr/embedded device

[Mille M1ll3]

Hi,

can anybody provide some instructions/directions on what would be necessary
to (cross-) compile a Java program using gcj for the AVR set of
family (or any other embedded architecture for that matter).
I thought of GCJ as a front-end to GCC so it should be possible
to use e.g. the avr-gcc backend? Knowing there are some size restrictions
due to libgcj I was hoping to get around that by statically linking.
Anyhow some pointers would really help!
Thanks!

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Re: Use gcj to compile for avr/embedded device

[Craig Vanderborgh]

Hello:

We have our own port of gcc/gcj 3.4.3 for arm-wince-pe.  This is a
different target than AVR (obviously) but the use case you describe is
identical to ours.

You will find that the single most important thing may be to avoid the
gcc/gcj 4.x series.  This is because the libgcj for 4.x is vastly
larger.  How much larger?  You can pretty much count on a factor of
about 2.  For our Voice XML browser, this meant that the statically
linked 4.x binary was about 14MB as opposed to just under 7MB for
3.4.3.  Not a problem if you can afford the bigger binary, but we
didn't have that much flash to burn.

If you have a linuxey runtime environment on AVR the port won't be too
hard.  If you don't it's much more difficult.  Getting
arm-wince-pe-gcj fully operational for Windows CE targets was very
difficult, especially for the garbage collector, interpreter and class
loading.  But it can be done, and the results in our case have been
very rewarding.

Craig Vanderborgh
Voxware Incorporated

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Mille M1ll3 <mille@mail.md> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> can anybody provide some instructions/directions on what would be necessary
> to (cross-) compile a Java program using gcj for the AVR set of
> family (or any other embedded architecture for that matter).
> I thought of GCJ as a front-end to GCC so it should be possible
> to use e.g. the avr-gcc backend? Knowing there are some size restrictions
> due to libgcj I was hoping to get around that by statically linking.
> Anyhow some pointers would really help!
> Thanks!
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> This e-mail was sent using Mail.md
>
>
>
>



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