Eclipse on gcj

[Chris Gray]

Hi Mark,

On Sunday 30 October 2005 00:05, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
> On Sat, 2005-10-29 at 22:36 +0200, Chris Gray wrote:
> > [to many of you: long time no see, I had 'flu for FOSDEM 2005 and
> > couldn't make it to the LinuxTag or whatever, hope to see you at FOSDEM
> > 2006 if not before ...]
>
> Trying to get together again at FOSDEM 2006 would be cool!
> Is there a date already for the event?

"Last weekend in February", according to the website.

> > I'm busy working on the functional spec for a device which will serve as
> > a service delivery point for domotics apps. The VM and OSGi framework are
> > already chosen, but we also have to specify a development environment
> > which can be used by service providers to develop and test their apps.
>
> Talking about OSGi I recently saw the following cool OSGi & GNU
> Classpath articles:
> OSGi on the Slug (using GNU Classpath and JamVM)
> - http://www.aqute.biz/2005/10/osgi-on-slug.html
> Compiling JamVM from source and running OSGi on it
> - Compiling JamVM from source and running OSGi on it
>
> > We have a
> > free hand here, and there are good reasons to go for GNU/Linux and
> > Eclipse. The question then is: should we go for a gcj-compiled version of
> > Eclipse? And if we do, does this influence our choice of GNU/Linux
> > distribution?
> >
> > [...]
>
> The best advice is "try it out". On x86 it seems pretty stable. But I
> have to admit that I am still a GNU Emacs user and not likely to
> "switch" any time soon :) From what I heard it isn't any faster then
> other solutions. And currently when you use random eclipse plugins then
> things might break down unfortunately. Best distro to try out at the
> moment is Fedora Core 4 (make sure you get all the updates). The latest
> Ubuntu also has a native Eclipse now and Debian unstable just got its
> first upload to main yesterday (they are still cleaning up some bugs).
> If you go for Fedora Core 4 follow the blog of Andrew Overholt who
> packages eclipse for that distro: http://www.overholt.ca/wp/
> [...]
> Here is a success and warning story. Wayne Beaton is the official
> eclipse evangelist. He got a new 64-bit machine with Fedora Core 4
> installed. So he was using gcj (unknowingly).
> "Eclipse was a breeze to install and run. I was up and running in
> minutes. I was able to build a couple of new projects and really get
> things going." ... Then he tried installing some random eclipse plugin
> and things worked less perfectly. Read the full story at:
> http://wbeaton.blogspot.com/2005/09/eclipse-in-64-bits.html
>
> So it might work flawlessly, even on 64-bit machines. But make sure all
> your plugins are supported.

OK, in this case I'll proceed with caution: we'll start out using Eclipse 
running on a Sun JRE, and while everyone is using that I'll test out the 
gcj-compiled version and see how it shakes up. Plug-ins are going to be 
important; we'll certainly be using one for the OSGi framework, and there may 
be a need for in-house or third-party plugins besides that. A development 
environment for OSGi that screws up Eclipse plugins would be embarrassing, to 
say the least. 8-0

Thanks for the sober assessment, Mark. Hope to see you soon in less sober 
circumstances (still haven't forgotten the curry in Saarbrueken ;->).

Best wishes,

Chris

> BTW. Wayne and I emailed a bit and here is his bug report
> (plus small test case):
> http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=22943
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark

-- 
Chris Gray        /k/ Embedded Java Solutions  BE0503765045
Embedded & Mobile Java, OSGi        http://www.kiffer.be/k/
chris.gray@kiffer.be                         +32 3 216 0369