Why interpret dynamically loaded classes?

[Andrew Haley]

Elmar Haneke writes:
 > Jack Andrews wrote:
 > 
 > > I note that both GCJ and TowerJ use a bytecode interpreter to handle dynamic
 > > class loading. But why not just compile the dynamically loaded class to a
 > > native shared object at *runtime*, then link at runtime, too?
 > 
 > This might be done!
 > 
 > But, I would expect it to be rather slow

Perhaps, but I really like this idea.  I've been thinking of doing
this for a while but I've never found the spare time to try it.  I
don't think it would be very difficult.

It might even be possible to keep a copy of gcj running in the
background and just feed it with new classfiles when required.  That's
more of a research project, though!

Andrew.