Re: Making shared objects with GCJ

[Mohan Embar <gnustuff at thisiscool dot com>]

Hi Andrew,

>If there's anything on thisiscool.com that applies to free as well as
>unfree operating systems, I'd like to have it on the gcj web site as
>well.

The only things I can think of are:

1. the tests / samples (the non-GUI ones build on Linux with the same
  included build scripts)
2. SWT + SwingWT instead of FSF AWT

For item 1, Bryce and Michael have repeatedly asked that I
rewrite some of the juicier networking, channels and interrupt
tests into Mauve tests, but I have never gotten around to this
and don't have the time to do this now. On several occasions,
these tests have caught bugs that weren't in Mauve. I feel bad
about this, but on the other hand, the samples are there for
anyone to use and morph.

Item 2 is direct competition with the GUI folks' efforts to write
a free AWT and Swing. As mentioned here previously, SWT
uses the CPL and therefore isn't compatible with GPL. However,
the SWT + SwingWT solution <i>would</i> work on a free OS,
which is what you asked about.

As I mention on my website, my SWT + SwingWT solution isn't
intended to minimize the efforts of the GUI folks, which I think are
amazing.

On a non-free OS note, I'm itching to write Win32 AWT peers (but
doubt I'll find time in the near future). For me, it would be a man-on-the-moon
sort of moment to suddenly see all of the GUI folks' AWT and Swing stuff
come to life on Win32. I started this work long time ago, but this is
only in the skeletal stages and I don't know whether the design is correct:

http://www.thisiscool.net/win32peer.zip

-- Mohan
http://www.thisiscool.com/
http://www.animalsong.org/