Re: Using gcj as an extension language

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

>>>>> "Erik" == Erik Poupaert <erik.poupaert@chello.be> writes:

Erik> There are so many decent alternatives. These people are also
Erik> extremely helpful and support their users with a big heart. What
Erik> value will GCJ add by implementing all these things? Especially
Erik> given the scarce resources?

Oh, we won't implement these things from scratch.  We try to cooperate
with other projects on the class libraries.  So, for instance, we
share a lot of the burden with Classpath, the org.w3c.* stuff comes
from elsewhere, etc.  The real question is what we need to ship to be
compatible with Sun's JDK.

Erik> What is GCJ's core business, actually?

The vision is to have a complete free software Java environment, with
an ahead of time compiler as the centerpiece.  "Complete" means we
want implementations of all the various programs, like jar, rmic, etc,
as well as all the class libraries.

Erik> Well, the time has come to put AWT and Swing where they belong:
Erik> in the trashcan.

It isn't that simple.  First, there are applications out there using
AWT.  I've been to meeting where lack of AWT immediately kills any
chance of using gcj.  So, while I agree that AWT isn't a great
toolkit, nevertheless we need it as long as Sun ships it.

Tom