Re: Reconsidering gcjx

[Mike Emmel <mike dot emmel at gmail dot com>]

Sorry to reply late to this thread. First I think concentrating on a
native bytcode compiler for java makes excellent sense it decouples
you from the front end implementation. And I agree that the eclipse
compiler is a good choice. I'd have to add that jikes is also
resonable.

I would like to say that my intrest in gcjx is not so much a java
compiler but as a framework for developing  native compilers for
objects oriented languages like ruby python etc etc.
Thus I think in a bigger context were gcjx became more of a compiler
suite for languages  that generally are only implemented as interpeted
is important. So I think there is a lot of value in gcjx from this
view point and a compiler target for bytecode is not the solution for
this class of problems. Also C++ probably makes more sense for a
generic frontend then java does.

Now it may be possible to extend the bytecode to handle efficient
compliation of languages such as ruby and thats pretty intresting but
generally bytecode makes implicit restrictions on the language MS CLR
is not truely generic for example but certianly it more complete then
java bytecode. I really don't see bytecode->native compilers ever
being really generic.