Re: Some observations on developing with gcj

[Mark Wielaard <mark at klomp dot org>]

Hi,

On Mon, 2003-06-30 at 07:18, Tom Tromey wrote:
> Mark> java-gnome <http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/> was surprisingly
> Mark> usable. The main drawback is that it currently is only available
> Mark> as jar files with jni libraries in Debian which means that you
> Mark> will have to use gij at the moment.
> 
> It should be possible to just run "gcj -fjni" on the .jar file.  Well,
> with gcj 3.3 this may not work perfectly, since the patch to compile
> property files isn't in that release.  It might only take you a few
> minutes to try it out...

org/gnu/atk/AtkObject.java:0: internal compiler error: Segmentation fault
0x08083b27 in parse_class_file () at /opt/src/gcc33/gcc/java/jcf-parse.c:787
787               linenumber_count = i = JCF_readu2 (jcf);

Will try later from source. The gnome-jave developers said that they
currently don't support compiling to native, but they did in the past so
it shouldn't be that hard to add back.

> Mark> When using the interpreter Kaffe is nicer since it gives line
> Mark> numbers.
> 
> Try compiling with -g.  Or do you mean that gij doesn't give line
> numbers?  That should go in bugzilla -- right now I think we drop this
> information, but we could easily keep it around.

Yes, the interpreter always gives (Unknown Source).

> Mark> And using gdb with gij gives not that nice backtraces since you
> Mark> can only see the interpreter frames.
> 
> Yeah.  Coincidentally I talked to Andrew Cagney about this problem
> last week.  As it turns out, gdb has a lot of the infrastructure to
> make it possible.  We just need somebody to actually work on it.  I
> doubt it is very easy; it probably requires a gdb expert, plus some
> additions to libgcj to make it possible for gdb to extract all the
> information it needs.

That would be really cool since it makes everything so much more
integrated. Looks like a nice project. If only I had more time :)

> Sure.  Like Jeff, lately I've been on #gcc on OFTC.  Anthony once
> tried to start a #gcj, but I don't think many people showed up.
> Anyway, tell me the channel and I'll be there.  We could also mention
> it on our web page.

BTW for people who don't know what OFTC is. It is http://www.oftc.net/
There is also http://www.freenode.org/ which seems to have a similar
goal. (And it is the official irc.gnu.org network.)

Cheers,

Mark