Re: GCJ information

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

>>>>> "Bose" == Ghanta, Bose <bose.ghanta@stratus.com> writes:

Bose> We are now looking into a compiler for Java language.  I would
Bose> appreciate if you can provide me information on GCJ and how it
Bose> compares to Sun Java 1.3 release and Hotspot.  Also information
Bose> on features improvements in GCJ.  What is the best GCJ release
Bose> we can bring up?

gcj has most language features, but is still missing `strictfp'.
libgcj has most of the core libraries.  By and large they are close to
1.3 compatibility, I think.  Some things are missing, most notably
AWT.  Some parts aren't well tested.
There is a bytecode interpreter but it is very slow.  There is no
JIT.  There are some missing VM-level features: stack overflow
detection doesn't work and some security features are missing.
As far as performance goes, I don't know.  I don't generally run
benchmarks very often.  I imagine for certain micro-benchmarks we
would do very well.

The best gcj release depends a lot on your needs.  On the one hand,
the current cvs trunk has the most features.  That is where all the
development happens -- and, since gcj is still actively developed, a
lot has changed since the most recent stable release (3.0.x -- I
forget if x==1 or x==2).  On the other hand, the cvs trunk
occasionally is broken in various ways.  So it isn't always a reliable
choice.  When 3.1 comes out, that will be the gcj compiler of choice.
However, that is still some months away.

Tom