libgcj maintenance for 4.0.x branch

[Andrew Haley]

David Daney writes:
 > Andrew Haley wrote:
 > > Bryce McKinlay writes:
 > >  > Andrew Haley wrote:
 > >  > 
 > >  > >Tom Tromey writes:
 > >  > > >
 > >  > > > The proposed rule here is actually fairly conservative, perhaps overly
 > >  > > > so.
 > >  > >
 > >  > >I think so.  I wonder if the idea of never breaking the ABI is a bit
 > >  > >too optimistic.  We will try, but ...
 > >  > >
 > >  > > > Starting with 4.1 I would like to see a much less conservative
 > >  > > > rule, namely that we only promise compatibility if you use
 > >  > > > -findirect-dispatch.
 > >  > >
 > >  > >Yes.
 > >  > 
 > >  > I agree, but I also we need to make -findirect-dispatch the default for 
 > >  > 4.1. Obviously some things need to happen before we can do this.
 > > 
 > > Source compilation, in particular.  The fact that it doesn't work is
 > > certainly my fault, but I'm pretty sure I know how to fix it.
 > > 
 > 
 > What is the strategy going to be for CNI?
 > 
 > We have a lot of CNI code that is not part of libgcj, It would be nice 
 > to have an easy migration to the BC-ABI.

There will be an easy migration.  Some of us discussed this with the
C++ compiler maintainers at the last GCC Summit, and there seems to be
no obstacle to adding Java indirect dispatch to the C++ compiler.
There is also the matter of registering CNI methods with the libgcj
runtime, but that's something that can be solved without a great deal
of complication.

Andrew.