Re: java

[Greg Hamilton <gregh@object-craft.com.au>]

Dalibor Topic wrote:

> Lucio wrote:
> Hi Lucio,
>
> > Java + linux (be it debian or others) + ppc is an unfortunate 
> > combination, because there isn't a complete java 2 VM that officially 
> > supports this kind of platform. You can try with gcj or kaffe or 
> > other OSS efforts, but, AFAIK, none of these currently implements 
> > full java 2 compliance.
>
>
> More correctly: Not the full 1.4 API compliance, because Sun keeps the 
> tests locked away. Both Kaffe and gcj have a lot of the classes from 
> 1.4 implemented, but it's impossible to say how compliant they are 
> with Sun without access to Sun's compliance tests.[1]
>
> In any case, it seems compliant enough these days to run Jetty, Tomcat 
> and such things. I guess that matters more in practice than sporting a 
> cute logo :)
>
> Now if I could only figure out why Kaffe fails to load classes for 
> Arnaud on powerpc, and find someone to fix the ppc JIT in Kaffe's CVS 
> to work on linux, I'd be happy :)
>
> cheers,
> dalibor topic
>
> [1] But of course, there is also a free software compliance test 
> suite, mauve :)
IBM distribute a free-as-in-beer binary only Java package which includes 
the SDK and JVM. I believe it has passed the Sun compliance tests. I 
don't have a download address handy but you should be able to find by 
searching their website. The packages are labeled p-series (PPC) and 
i-series (Intel). I use it on a G3 iBook running Debian.

Unfortunately there's no browser plugin and I recall there's an 
environment variable which must be set to specify the target processor 
if you're not using a G4 or the runtime will fail trying to execute 
illegal instructions.