Re: Get an idea of the gcj/libgcj status

[Tom Tromey <tromey at cygnus dot com>]

>>>>> "Maurizio" == Maurizio De Cecco <maurizio@mandrakesoft.com> writes:

Maurizio> I found a little bit difficult to get a precise idea of the
Maurizio> state of the gcj/libgcj project; it seems in a very active
Maurizio> developement phase, but it is not very clear to me exactly
Maurizio> what is going on, its relationship with the classpath
Maurizio> projects, and so on ...

libgcj is still under active development.  We have a few current
projects:

* We are slowly merging the class library with Classpath.
* We are merging libgcj into the gcc repository.  gcj and libgcj will
  be part of the gcc 3.0 release.
* Some volunteers are working on an AWT implementation.  (As usual,
  there is no schedule for this work, or even a guarantee that it will
  be completed.)

Of course other work goes on as well, but some of it is contract work
we do here at Red Hat and I can't really discuss it.

Maurizio> So, i imagine that you hear this question every other day,
Maurizio> i.e. what can be actually done with it, and, for what cannot
Maurizio> be done, how far it is in the future; to be more precise,
Maurizio> assume as domain a server side developement, using Java
Maurizio> Apache stuff; how far we are from being able to use the
Maurizio> Apache Java stuff with gcj/libgcj ?

I've successfully built Apache JServ using libgcj and I've demoed it
running compiled applets.  I could dig up a spec file and some JServ
patches if people think that would be interesting.  I can't spend any
more time updating them though.

Currently we mostly support JDK 1.1 (except AWT).  The compiler has
full support for this, including inner classes and the like (though
some of the newer features are perhaps a bit buggy).

If you want to run interpreted applets, then note that the interpreter
has only been ported to x86 and IA-64.  Porting it to a new
architecture requires a small amount of assembly programming.

Tom