4.1 release libgcj.dll status?

[Heitzso <heitzso at growthmodels dot com>]

4.1 gcj + swt M5a is a viable option.  However an application
programmer needs a development environment that unpacks in
half a day to a day when using a current (official?) "HOWTO"
set of instructions.

As others have noted elsewhere on the internet, an app developer
building a commercial product has to dynamically link to the LGPL
libraries, otherwise the commercial code is infected.  So having
dynamic lib generation/linking is key.

I've spent another day fighting cross-win gcj/swt, this time trying
to build working libgcj.dll(a) and libswt.dll(a), and link them with
my app's java code.  A good bit of my time has been spent googling
around, wading through email lists, etc.  I'm trying to do my homework.

One problem is ... what worked a year ago for 3.x does not work
with 4.1, and what worked for a 4.1 snapshot from half a year ago
may not work with 4.1 release.

Ouch.

My sense is 4.1/swt is real close to being a general purpose
dev tool.  But thisiscool style pre-builds that provide and work w/
dynamic libs have to be available on the net for that magic door to
open.  I'm very grateful for all of the hard work that's gone into
gcj et al by a number of dedicated developers.  I'm not dissing
that work.  Just noting what needs to happen for that work to
translate out in the marketplace as a commonly used tool set.

While digging around on the net I noted a thread on this list
from several years ago that talked about some automated build
mechanism that generated unpack-and-go tarballs for a number
of different architectures.  Everyone seemed to agree that that
would be a good thing, but the technical difficulties/effort
overwhelmed that option back then.

Summing up, would be nice to have:
   a native (msys is fine) Windows dev env w/ dynamic gcj/swt libs
   an x86 linux cross to windows dev env w/ dynamic gcj/swt libs
   an OSX native w/ dynamic libs able to gen double architecture
      executables and dynamic libs

If someone provides me with scripts that work I'll be glad to
crunch (windows/linux-x86/ppc-g4-osx) versions and post to
my web site for others to download.   I'm also willing to help
sketch a HOWTO for others to flesh out and correct.  Ideally
that HOWTO would be posted at official gcj site and kept up
to date.  But I not geared to be a compiler-tool-set developer
at the moment so am not able to assimilate the many variations
of ways to do what I'm asking for that I've found on the net
and come up with a working cross build.


Heitzso