Question of the status of GCJ

[Mike Purdy]

Thank you Andrew.  

This is interesting.  Does the OpenJDK allow native compilation?

Mike

>>> Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com> 2/17/2009 12:46 PM >>>
Mike Purdy wrote:
> I would like to ask an admittedly embarrassing question regarding
the
> status of GCJ development and its use to natively compile SWT
> applications for Linux, OSX, and perhaps Windows (though this is not
an
> immediate need).
> 
> The embarrassing part is that I've lost track for a while now of
where
> GCJ development is at, what version of java it supports, how it
relates
> to Sun's open sourcing of java, and what the future development
plans
> are for GCJ.  I would like to pick back up soon with the possibility
of
> natively compiling a couple projects, but I need to get back up to
speed
> with GCJ as a whole first.
> 
> I appreciate any insight anyone can provide.  Is natively compiling
SWT
> applications still supported or feasible?

This comes up from time to time.

gcj is still there, and still works.  However, it has never been
tested
for compatibility with Java, and I'm sure if it were so tested, it
would
fail.  OpenJDK, as well as being a high-performance VM, is compatible
with
Java, and so is more useful to many people.

So, most of the effort in the free software world now goes into
OpenJDK.
However, people still use gcj.

The current gcj supports something vaguely like Java 1.5, but it isn't
complete AFAIAA.

Andrew.

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