Re: Eclipse on gcj

[Mark Wielaard <mark at klomp dot org>]

Hi Chris,

On Sat, 2005-10-29 at 22:36 +0200, Chris Gray wrote:
> [to many of you: long time no see, I had 'flu for FOSDEM 2005 and couldn't 
> make it to the LinuxTag or whatever, hope to see you at FOSDEM 2006 if not 
> before ...]

Trying to get together again at FOSDEM 2006 would be cool!
Is there a date already for the event?

> I'm busy working on the functional spec for a device which will serve as a 
> service delivery point for domotics apps. The VM and OSGi framework are 
> already chosen, but we also have to specify a development environment which 
> can be used by service providers to develop and test their apps.

Talking about OSGi I recently saw the following cool OSGi & GNU
Classpath articles:
OSGi on the Slug (using GNU Classpath and JamVM)
- http://www.aqute.biz/2005/10/osgi-on-slug.html
Compiling JamVM from source and running OSGi on it
- Compiling JamVM from source and running OSGi on it

> We have a 
> free hand here, and there are good reasons to go for GNU/Linux and Eclipse. 
> The question then is: should we go for a gcj-compiled version of Eclipse? And 
> if we do, does this influence our choice of GNU/Linux distribution?
> 
> The development environment has to be reasonably easy to set up, and it will 
> be used by Java programmers who may or not know something about domotics, but 
> they are unlikely to be gcc/gcj/linux buffs. So installation of the 
> development environment has to be as simple as "install the GNU/Linux 
> distribution from CDs 1--n, then put CD n+1 in the drive and double-click on 
> install". And no funny stuff when they use it, either.
> 
> Are we now at the stage when pre-built Eclipse/gcj binaries can be installed 
> this way and used by mere mortals, and if so for what distributions do such 
> pre-built binaries exist? My customer is used to Suse, I myself mostly use 
> Debian, but I'm open to suggestions.

The best advice is "try it out". On x86 it seems pretty stable. But I
have to admit that I am still a GNU Emacs user and not likely to
"switch" any time soon :) From what I heard it isn't any faster then
other solutions. And currently when you use random eclipse plugins then
things might break down unfortunately. Best distro to try out at the
moment is Fedora Core 4 (make sure you get all the updates). The latest
Ubuntu also has a native Eclipse now and Debian unstable just got its
first upload to main yesterday (they are still cleaning up some bugs).
If you go for Fedora Core 4 follow the blog of Andrew Overholt who
packages eclipse for that distro: http://www.overholt.ca/wp/

> I'd like to be able to make some small contribution to the cause of world 
> freedom in this way, but I don't want to end up with egg on my face (and such 
> an outcome would not be beneficial to gcj).

Here is a success and warning story. Wayne Beaton is the official
eclipse evangelist. He got a new 64-bit machine with Fedora Core 4
installed. So he was using gcj (unknowingly).
"Eclipse was a breeze to install and run. I was up and running in
minutes. I was able to build a couple of new projects and really get
things going." ... Then he tried installing some random eclipse plugin
and things worked less perfectly. Read the full story at:
http://wbeaton.blogspot.com/2005/09/eclipse-in-64-bits.html

So it might work flawlessly, even on 64-bit machines. But make sure all
your plugins are supported.

BTW. Wayne and I emailed a bit and here is his bug report
(plus small test case):
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=22943

Cheers,

Mark

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