libjava status on Solaris 8/Intel and IRIX 6.5

[Andrew Haley]

Tom Tromey writes:
 > >>>>> "Adam" == Adam Megacz <gcj@lists.megacz.com> writes:
 > 
 > Adam> What's the advantage to using template-references instead of
 > Adam> pointers?  Non-conservative GC, perhaps? What else?
 > 
 > Andrew> Inline reference checks, mostly.
 > 
 > Adam> Can't the gcc equivalent of the JVM's 'CheckClassCast' be inlined?
 > 
 > Andrew is really referring to null pointer checks here, not cast
 > checking.  The problem is if you write CNI code on MMU-less platforms,
 > then you have to insert manual null pointer checks in your code.  This
 > is hard to maintain.  So one idea is to use ref<> instead and then let
 > the wrapper template do the checking on such platforms.

Actually, it's the only idea left.  I submitted a patch to the C++
compiler which would let it do null pointer checking.  The patch was
rejected, although I reckon it would have been useful for C++ as well.
Sigh.

I've been thinking of designing a scheme which allows us to run both
schemes in parallel.  This would allow us to convert libgcj without
breaking CNI compatibility for existing users.  I can also write a
program to convert sources automatically to the new form.

I hope that if I can make the pain of conversion very slight that I
will be able to persuade people to let me do it.

Andrew.