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Per Bothner writes: > > One thing I'm curious about is how gcj will play with Java 1.2. This > > is a good question: how does one use the 1.2 runtimes with gcj? > > You won't be able to (unless you do a fair bit of hacking). > gcj will "play" with its own run-time and (smallish) standard libraries, A fair bit of hacking is a fair price to pay. > > What issues need to be addressed? > > Tons, both legal and technical. The technical issues of mixing and > matching run-times (i.e. gjc fundamental classes + Sun's non-fundamental > class) can probably be worked out, but we intend to stay of out it, > because of the legal issues. (We can't depend on Sun's classes for > our releases anyway - and neither can GNU.) Cool. These issues need to be understood well. I think you are saying that Cygnus will provide a set of java.* classes for which you provide implementations (class files) and sources. Further if we want to use the Sun classes from a particular JDK reference release (pure java, i.e. no native code involved) then we are on our own and good luck to us. Correct? Are you targeting the gcj fundamental classes to be consistent with a particular Java release, either 1.0 or 1.1? Do you plan to support JNI and RMI when you have a release that generates executables? It is fair to point me to your Web site if the answers are there. It's been a while since I read the initial announcement. My plan is to use gcj when it is released and attempt to build a JDK1.2beta4 based program. Needless to say, it won't work because support for particular 1.2 classes will not exist. Then I'd try to include the JDK rt.jar (or derivative) on the classpath and find that some things work and some things are still broken. Then the task would be to provide implementations for the remaining broken classes. I won't really know the scope of this task till I see how much gcj does. I assume Cygnus will gladly take "clean" source code for the standard libraries required for consistency with Java 1.2. Correct? -pmr