Re: Using gcj as an extension language

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

>>>>> "Erik" == Erik Poupaert <erik.poupaert@chello.be> writes:

Erik> My most important concerns for the future, with GCJ, is the fear
Erik> that GCJ will try to catch up with the JDK as it goes from
Erik> version 1.4 to 1.5 to whatever

Currently that is our goal.  However, we hope it won't be quite as
horrible as you paint it to be :-)

Note that moving to 1.5 is going to be a big deal.  My understanding
is that generics are in 1.5.  That will mean a lot of front end work,
assuming anybody can ever find the time to do it...

Erik> [...] and implement a frightening array of duplicate
Erik> technologies, including the latest hypes, in the core of its
Erik> class libraries. (AWT, Swing), (RMI, CORBA, SOAP, ...); and that
Erik> my executables will get bigger and bigger and bigger

We do have options for addressing this problem.  For instance, we
could split libgcj.so into several shared libraries, if we also solve
the linking problem (cf org.w3c.* discussions).  That would let us
more closely approximate "you pay for what you use".

As to your list: Don't expect a working Swing in the forseeable
future.  AWT, maybe.  We already have RMI.  CORBA we'll probably
handle through rhug (or we might follow Classpath; not sure yet).  I
don't know about SOAP.

Tom