Re: Java Compiling on HPUX 11.00

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

>>>>> "Iain" == Iain Wiseman <bibble@paradise.net.nz> writes:

Iain> We have a variety of platforms, including Linux, Sun and HPUX.

Iain> As luck would have it the gcc 3.0.4 compiler had major issues
Iain> with shared libraries on HPUX (gotta love hpux) and we were
Iain> forced to go to 3.2

It is probably better to use 3.2 in any case.  3.0 is quite old.
We've fixed many, many bugs in gcj and libgcj since then.

Iain> On Linux
Iain> 1) Cannot find javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;  

Yeah.  Our support here is a bit thin.  We once imported some of the
org.w3c.* and org.xml.* classes.  However nobody has updated them, and
my understanding is that we can't import all of the latest xerces code
due to licensing considerations.

I've considered simply deleting these classes and requiring people to
get and build xerces themselves.

This is something you can do, but it isn't entirely trivial: you have
to make sure not to compile the classes that are already in libgcj.

However, there is a canned solution here, namely rhug:

    http://sources.redhat.com/rhug/

This project includes a copy of xerces set up to build with gcj.

Iain> On HPUX 
Iain> 1) gcj will not build 

Yes.  As far as I know nobody has ever tried to build libgcj on HPUX.
According to my old 3.1 status page, nobody tried building gcj 3.1 on
that platform (3.2 is just 3.1 with some important fixes; I don't
think the gcj code changed at all).

Iain> Fails on some files because of _REENTRENT and on the file
Iain> <ffi.h>.

I don't know about _REENTRANT problems.  Can you tell me what happens
there?

As to ffi.h -- libffi doesn't work on HPUX.  I'm told that it would be
fairly difficult to port; apparently PA has a tricky ABI.

libgcj can be built without a working libffi.  However, doing this
disables reflection (Method.invoke doesn't work any more) and also the
interpreter.

If you can live without those, and assuming the GC works on that
platform (I haven't looked), then doing a port isn't too difficult.
Usually it is just configuration tweaks here and there.

If you need reflection or the interpreter, then you need to port
libffi.  This requires assembly programming and intimate knowledge of
the platform ABI.

Iain> I have disable the library but it still complain about zlib
Iain> targets.

I don't know what you mean.
Does the target zlib not get built?

Iain> 1) Will it ever work on HPUX 11?

If someone does the port, then it will work.

Iain> 2) What alternatives are there?

You could try to do the port yourself, with help (occasionally flaky
:-) from this list.  Or you could pay someone to do the port.  Or
convince someone to do it.  Or wait until someone else does it.

Tom