Re: Up-to-date News on GCJ

[Andi Vajda <andi at osafoundation dot org>]

On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, Bryce McKinlay wrote:

> Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> > Does GCJ really have different PR needs?  Frankly, I'd like to give
> > GCJ much more presence in terms on the GCC side, and ramp of GCC PR
> > quite a bit.  I don't necessarily think the needs are so different,
> > rather that GCJ may be doing better. :-)
>
> IMO we do have - somewhat - different PR needs. For one thing, our audience 
> is different - we're reaching out to Java developers who may not necessarily 
> have any interest in C/C++ or the rest of the compiler suite. Also, GCJ can 
> be seen as a collection of technologies of which the compiler is just one 
> part. That isn't to say the pages should be separate, but it would be 
> confusing if (for example) too much non-Java information were to be seen on 
> the GCJ pages. I'd like to see GCJ maintain (and grow) its own web identity 
> alongside GCC.

There are two things that make gcj+libgcj unique:

 1. Political: gcj+libgcj are a truly free java platform
 2. Technical: gcj+libgcj break java's insularity by allowing java modules to
               be embedded in non-java processes via CNI

This second aspect is apparently often overlooked and is of importance to the 
"usual" gcc audience. Java-only programmers sitting on their java island 
probably couldn't care less but to the rest of the programming world, 
gcj+libgcj are a truly unique set of technologies worth being advertised.

Andi..