Re: Status of the GJC

Re: Status of the GJC

[Paulo Pinto]

Hi everyone,

I tried to find out more information about the current state of GJC
in the GCC web site, but to no avail with the latest news being from
September 2009.

Is it still being developed, or only in maintenance mode?

Thanks in advance,
Paulo

Re: Status of the GJC

[Andrew Haley]

On 10/22/2010 09:44 PM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I tried to find out more information about the current state of GJC
> in the GCC web site, but to no avail with the latest news being from
> September 2009.
> 
> Is it still being developed, or only in maintenance mode?

It's gcj.

It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.

Andrew.

Re: Status of the GJC

[Harpal Grover]

>
>
> It's gcj.
>
> It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
> the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
> need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
> gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.

I think that's an excellent idea.

How does one start helping out with that?

Harpal Grover

Re: Status of the GJC

[David Daney]

On 10/25/2010 02:56 PM, Harpal Grover wrote:
>>
>>
>> It's gcj.
>>
>> It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
>> the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
>> need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
>> gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.
>
> I think that's an excellent idea.
>
> How does one start helping out with that?
>

Get a copyright assignment in place for GCC and classpath so your 
patches can be accepted.

Then start hacking away.  The GCC and GCJ websites have a lot of 
information on various aspects of this process.  After looking there, 
you can ask questions on java@gcc.gnu.org.

David Daney

Re: Status of the GJC

[Mark Wielaard]

On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 17:56 -0400, Harpal Grover wrote:
> > It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
> > the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
> > need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
> > gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.
> 
> I think that's an excellent idea.
> 
> How does one start helping out with that?

There was a project to create a Common Virtual Machine Interface which
has some interesting pointers. And Andrew Hughes made enough progress on
it to get JamVM to work against it. This project is currently not very
active, but seems a good starting point:
http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/CVMIDiscussion
http://fuseyism.com/openjdk/cvmi/

Cheers,

Mark

Re: Status of the GJC

[Andrew Haley]

On 10/26/2010 10:26 AM, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 17:56 -0400, Harpal Grover wrote:
>>> It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
>>> the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
>>> need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
>>> gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.
>>
>> I think that's an excellent idea.
>>
>> How does one start helping out with that?
> 
> There was a project to create a Common Virtual Machine Interface which
> has some interesting pointers. And Andrew Hughes made enough progress on
> it to get JamVM to work against it. This project is currently not very
> active, but seems a good starting point:
> http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/CVMIDiscussion
> http://fuseyism.com/openjdk/cvmi/

Hmm.  I would have thought it made more sense to get gcj working with
the Sun JDK VM interface.  I think we would have done it that way to
begin with, but the JDK VM interface was secret.

Andrew.

Re: Status of the GJC

[Mark Wielaard]

On Tue, 2010-10-26 at 10:30 +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
> On 10/26/2010 10:26 AM, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 17:56 -0400, Harpal Grover wrote:
> >>> It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
> >>> the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
> >>> need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
> >>> gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.
> >>
> >> I think that's an excellent idea.
> >>
> >> How does one start helping out with that?
> > 
> > There was a project to create a Common Virtual Machine Interface which
> > has some interesting pointers. And Andrew Hughes made enough progress on
> > it to get JamVM to work against it. This project is currently not very
> > active, but seems a good starting point:
> > http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/CVMIDiscussion
> > http://fuseyism.com/openjdk/cvmi/
> 
> Hmm.  I would have thought it made more sense to get gcj working with
> the Sun JDK VM interface.  I think we would have done it that way to
> begin with, but the JDK VM interface was secret.

The CVMI pages point to descriptions of the current VM interfaces of
both GNU Classpath (which gcj largely implements) and how Hotspot
interfaces with the OpenJDK class library. It also has a pointer to what
Cacao does (which implements both, plus the CLDC/PhoneME interface). So
even if you don't want to reuse any code from the project itself, it
seems a good starting point if you want to figure out what needs to be
done/changed.

Cheers,

Mark

Re: Status of the GJC

[Ian Rogers]

On 26 October 2010 02:41, Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-10-26 at 10:30 +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
>> On 10/26/2010 10:26 AM, Mark Wielaard wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 17:56 -0400, Harpal Grover wrote:
>> >>> It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
>> >>> the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
>> >>> need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
>> >>> gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.
>> >>
>> >> I think that's an excellent idea.
>> >>
>> >> How does one start helping out with that?
>> >
>> > There was a project to create a Common Virtual Machine Interface which
>> > has some interesting pointers. And Andrew Hughes made enough progress on
>> > it to get JamVM to work against it. This project is currently not very
>> > active, but seems a good starting point:
>> > http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/CVMIDiscussion
>> > http://fuseyism.com/openjdk/cvmi/
>>
>> Hmm.  I would have thought it made more sense to get gcj working with
>> the Sun JDK VM interface.  I think we would have done it that way to
>> begin with, but the JDK VM interface was secret.
>
> The CVMI pages point to descriptions of the current VM interfaces of
> both GNU Classpath (which gcj largely implements) and how Hotspot
> interfaces with the OpenJDK class library. It also has a pointer to what
> Cacao does (which implements both, plus the CLDC/PhoneME interface). So
> even if you don't want to reuse any code from the project itself, it
> seems a good starting point if you want to figure out what needs to be
> done/changed.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark

Hi,

so this isn't ready to be announced yet, but follows the theme of this
thread. I've been working on merging GCJ with other class libraries.
Some information is available here:

http://code.google.com/p/bubbletea/

Currently I'm working on Harmony support for GCJ as it has a much
nicer build environment. I'm hoping Jigsaw will sort out the OpenJDK
build and will then work to merge that.

Regards,
Ian

Re: Status of the GJC

[Dr Andrew John Hughes]

On 8 November 2010 21:18, Ian Rogers <rogers.email@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26 October 2010 02:41, Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, 2010-10-26 at 10:30 +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
>>> On 10/26/2010 10:26 AM, Mark Wielaard wrote:
>>> > On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 17:56 -0400, Harpal Grover wrote:
>>> >>> It's mostly in maintenance mode.  The compiler itself is pretty solid, but
>>> >>> the Classpath runtime library isn't being developed very much.  We really
>>> >>> need to port gcj to use the OpenJDK runtime libraries, which would make
>>> >>> gcj an excellent product, but so far no-one has had the time to do it.
>>> >>
>>> >> I think that's an excellent idea.
>>> >>
>>> >> How does one start helping out with that?
>>> >
>>> > There was a project to create a Common Virtual Machine Interface which
>>> > has some interesting pointers. And Andrew Hughes made enough progress on
>>> > it to get JamVM to work against it. This project is currently not very
>>> > active, but seems a good starting point:
>>> > http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/CVMIDiscussion
>>> > http://fuseyism.com/openjdk/cvmi/
>>>
>>> Hmm.  I would have thought it made more sense to get gcj working with
>>> the Sun JDK VM interface.  I think we would have done it that way to
>>> begin with, but the JDK VM interface was secret.
>>
>> The CVMI pages point to descriptions of the current VM interfaces of
>> both GNU Classpath (which gcj largely implements) and how Hotspot
>> interfaces with the OpenJDK class library. It also has a pointer to what
>> Cacao does (which implements both, plus the CLDC/PhoneME interface). So
>> even if you don't want to reuse any code from the project itself, it
>> seems a good starting point if you want to figure out what needs to be
>> done/changed.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Mark
>
> Hi,
>
> so this isn't ready to be announced yet, but follows the theme of this
> thread. I've been working on merging GCJ with other class libraries.
> Some information is available here:
>
> http://code.google.com/p/bubbletea/
>
> Currently I'm working on Harmony support for GCJ as it has a much
> nicer build environment. I'm hoping Jigsaw will sort out the OpenJDK
> build and will then work to merge that.
>

You'll have a long wait for that.  Jigsaw now isn't scheduled to
appear until JDK8 in 2012 and the way it's developed so far suggests
to me it won't be much use when it does finally appear.

Jigsaw could have been a great exemplary project of how the OpenJDK
community can produce something much better than that which would have
produced inside Oracle.  Sadly this has not come to past.  The Jigsaw
project has so far failed to interact with the GNU/Linux distributions
in a way that would make such an idea work well.  Instead, all work on
it remains focused within Oracle with little external discussion.

> Regards,
> Ian
>

-- 
Andrew :-)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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