[coyotos-dev] Accept GCJ into the tool chain?

[Valerio Bellizzomi]

On 26/11/2006, at 14.40, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:

>There is code in our tree that would benefit from using a language like
>Java or C#. Specifically, from a language providing safe pointers,
>garbage collection, and exceptions. Because of this, it was unfortunate
>that we could *not* rely on Java for anything in the EROS tree. There
>were several reasons for this:
>
>1. The JDK was not openly available. This meant that the cost of
>bringing up an EROS-hosted Java runtime was prohibitive.
>
>2. There was no alternative that was sufficiently mature. The GNU
>ClassPath library was in its early stages and proceeding very slowly.
>The Kaffe VM was insufficiently mature. GCJ didn't yet exist in usable
>form.
>
>3. Our build model was (and remains) heavily dependent on traditional
>UNIX tools such as "make". The Java build model and execution model
>wasn't terribly friendly to our build environment.
>
>Two critical things have changed since then:
>
>1. GCJ and ClassPath have made huge strides. The current version of GCJ
>has been used to compile some very large systems, most notably Eclipse.
>This means that GCJ is probably usable enough for our purposes. The next
>version (4.2) will move forward to a ClassPath library that is very
>nearly functionally complete. This addresses points (1,2,3).
>
>2. Two weeks ago, Sun announced a plan to release Java SE and much of
>the class library under GPL (http://www.sun.com/2006-1113/feature/). It
>is unclear what they will be forced to withhold from the class library,
>but it is likely that a community will rapidly emerge to replace
>whatever items must be withheld. This addresses points (1,2).
>
>So: should we now consider adopting Java as a significant language for
>application development in Coyotos?

Hmmm, I think Java is good only for Web apps, not for system programs,
I will use C/BitC and Ada if it will be available,
Pascal would be good for didactic purposes,
I don't want to learn another language, there are too many things going on
here.

val