OS-X (ppc) and libjava status

[Andreas Tobler <toa at pop dot agri dot ch>]

Hello all,

I write this message due to the fact that there are some hidden 
dependencies in this area.
Libjava/libgcj is working pretty good on darwin-pcc, if one has the 
needed libraries (gtk2+, cairo etc.) we can run all the classpath 
examples and they work more or less. Even a jedit or a freechart demo 
rocks. Well some minor issues which will improve after the next cp import.

The hidden dependencies I mentioned above are more in terms of 
prerequisites. Darwin-pcc < 8.0.0 lacks a lot of proper core 
functionality which leads to unwanted behavior and also to a lot of 
headache.
darwin >= 8 has a revised/reimplemented pthreads architecture and also a 
reimplemented dlopen facility. Additional the static constructors are 
starting to work with darwin8. Before it was not possible to have a core 
libgcj loading an additional library. The methods where not known. The 
constructors ended up in /dev/null.

So, the message I want to bring over is, if one wants to play with 
libgcj under OS-X/darwin he/she should make sure to use a version more 
recent than darwin-8.0.0. Everything before only works for simple 'Hello 
World' on the command line.

I'm pleased to give more details if needed.

Just wanted to tell _my_ experiences for darwin-pcc.

Andreas