Re: GCJ and Sun going GPL (again)

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

Marco Trudel writes:
 > 
 > I'm sorry to bring this question up again, although it was already there 
 > twice, but I didn't get a satisfying view of how GCJ will react on the 
 > latest Sun actions.
 > So far only Andrew responded and to me, it looked like the summarized 
 > answer was "GCJ won't change anything". Is that correct?

No.  If there is one thing I really hate, it's being misrepresented.
Please don't ever do it again.

For anyone who wants to know what I actually wrote, the posting is at
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java/2006-11/msg00031.html.

 > Tom, what are your plans, what do you think?
 > 
 > In my opinion, the two cool things about GCJ were that:
 > 1. it was open source and free
 > 2. that it allows static and shared native compilation
 > 
 > Well, point one is no longer an advantage because a Sun JRE/JDK has way 
 > less bugs/problems and is more stable. Point 2 still completely rocks 
 > and is a real enhancement to the Java world.
 > So, to get the best out of the native compilation, it would make sense 
 > to use the class library from Sun instead of the one from GNU classpath.

That's possibly so.  I'll reserve judgment until I see it.
 
 > In my experience, one will most probably always run into bugs when using 
 > GNU classpath with big or real world projects. There are even more 
 > problems than the hidden/unknown bugs in the finished parts:
 > - AWT/Swing is not finished, has a lot of bugs, only works on Linux
 > - A lot of parts are slow compared to a Sun JRE
 > - XML doesn't work properly
 > - crypto has quite a lot of issues
 > 
 > It would be great to switch to the Sun class library to archive a more 
 > stable, less buggy and up to date GCJ project.

Maybe.  But it will take a lot of work: it's not simply a matter of
recompilation.

 > The other thing is the gcj/ecj/javac thing. There, I can't tell much 
 > about, because I was never directly involved in these. But I think it 
 > would make sense to use everything from Sun instead from different 
 > places. But again, I don't know how big the advantage would be.

There is one possible advantage to using Sun's javac: being
GPL-compatible, we can execute it in-process rather than exec()ing it.
Otherwise, it's another free Java compiler.

 > Anything I missed? Ideas? Hints? Opinions?

We need to get the actual code to know that for sure.  There are
issues of platform coverage and VM interface that we won't know until
we see it.

Andrew.