Re: Java on uClinux (was: Null pointer check elimination)

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com> writes:

Bernd> Speaking of which, has anyone ported gcj to a MMU-less uClinux
Bernd> platform yet?

Andrew> It's impossible with the current config.  This is because some of
Andrew> libgcj is written on C++, and the C++ compiler FE does not insert
Andrew> checks for null pointer accesses.

I prefer to think of these ports as degraded, not impossible.  You
won't get NPEs in all situations, due to how we wrote the CNI code.
(This could be fixed, of course, but motivation is low.)  Well-behaved
code will still work fine.

We've done plenty of ports to MMU-less systems in the past.  In fact
the first port was to a MIPS platform with no MMU, no threads (we used
a "qthreads" package based on setjmp), no I/O, etc.  This is still
possible in theory, though probably bits of configury have rotted over
time out of disuse.  (Though I think Anthony does builds like this
from time to time, doesn't he?)

Tom