note on debian and JNI

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

There is a somewhat active debian-java@lists.debian.org mailing
lists which discusses such things as Debian policy and directory
organization for Java packages and implementations.

Judging from the archive, there is some discussion/awareness
of Gcj, but most of the discussion is on other implementations.
I think I will join the list (I use Debian at home); others
may want to as well.

One quote worth noting:

Bernd Kreimeier <bk@lokigames.com> wrote on November 25th:

> One important issue from my POV: gcj does not support JNI, and in previous
> inquiries to Cygnus, I did not get the impression that JNI is a priority.
> IIRC Tom Tromey said that JNI could be implemented on top of CNI, and that
> outside contributors are welcome to add it.

> Lack of JNI affects use of Classpath (e.g. as an alternative to libgcj)
> as well as small, standalone apps that replace AWT with some really simple
> GUI (like using curses, e.g. for small installers). It also affects projects
> which have native code for performance reasons. At the moment, gcj basically
> forces a CNI port. The only alternative I am aware of is TowerJ, which is
> good for commercial projects, but does not offer anything to open source.

Perhaps JNI should have higher priority than we have given it?  I
don't know if Cygnus currently has scheduled work on JNI.  I've
mentioned before my ideas for how we can implement JNI relatively
easily while keeping JNI's overhead to a minumum.  If someone (Cygnus
or other) wants to tackle the project, I'll be happy to give my
suggestions.  (Actually, you'll have a hardtime stopping me from
giving my opinions!)
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/