building gcj on OS X (also AWT)

[John Gabriele]

On May 22, 2004, at 3:13 PM, Tom Tromey wrote:

>>>>>> "John" == John Gabriele <john3g@bestweb.net> writes:
>
> John> I'd like to build gcc 3.4.0 on Mac OS X 10.3.3. In particular,
> John> I want gcj, hopefully with whatever AWT/Swing comes with it,
> John> just so I can write command line and also simple GUI user apps.
>
> Great.  I read through this thread, and I just have a few comments to
> make.
>
> John> Also, is GCJ's AWT currently the best option (vs. Swing) to do
> John> a simple GUI?
>
> AWT is definitely more advanced than Swing at this point.  However,
> even AWT is not very complete.
>
> Note that AWT work is ongoing.  Tom Fitzsimmons and David Jee in
> particular have been doing a lot of work in this area.  How complete
> the support is will depend on the precise snapshot you pick up.
>

I'm glad to hear the AWT implementation is going along so well.
Swing is so enormous. It would be nice to at least have a small
subset of Swing, just so folks could get some basic widgets in
a window and maybe do some drawing. That's all I need it for,
and I suspect there's a lot of folks in the same boat as me.

> I believe Tom's jhbuild work will check out the "GUI branch", which
> is where development on AWT and Swing takes place.  Here's some
> information on that:
>
>     http://people.redhat.com/fitzsim/gcj-and-jhbuild.html
>
> I have no idea whether jhbuild will build gcj on Mac OS X.
>

Hmm... so, this "GUI Branch" (containing what there is of the
AWT/Swing implementation) is separate from GCJ?

I've read that GCJ and Classpath are now working together, so
I'd expect the newest AWT/Swing stuff to come from either the
GCJ site, or else the Classpath site
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/downloads/downloads.html
?

Given the regular work being done on AWT/Swing, an easy way
to update your system to the latest-and-greatest would be
fabulous. I'll have to read more about jhbuild.

>
> I know you didn't ask about this, but another nice way to build GUIs
> with gcj is to use the java-gnome package.  This is a set of Gtk (and
> Gnome, etc) bindings for Java.
>

Ah, here we are: http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/
Thanks for offering the information. :) It looks great.

I currently don't have much time for hacking around getting
this sort of stuff working (which is one reason I'm using
Java (instead of C++) and Apple's J2SE SDK on OS X ATM).
Also, I know a little AWT/Swing and like it well enough.
On top of that, it's nice to be able to send my own Java
stuff to friends using Mac/Windows and them be able to run
it.

>
> John> Will AWT only work with X (and not Quartz)?
>
> We currently have two peers: the plain xlib peers and the Gtk peers.
> The xlib peers have minimal functionality and sort of limp along,
> usually building but not really tested except by Scott Gilbertson.
> The Gtk peers get a lot more attention and are much more complete.
>
> We would welcome folks wanting to write Quartz (whatever that is :-)
> peers, or Windows peers, or whatever else.
>
> Tom
>

Thanks for the info. If I want to stick with OS X for a while,
I think my next step is to find out about installing GTK+.

Is Fedora 2 currently the distro with the most up-to-date
Java/GCJ/AWT/Swing support?

---J