W liście z pon, 12-08-2002, godz. 21:22, Adam Heath pisze: > On 12 Aug 2002, Grzegorz Prokopski wrote: > > W liście z pon, 12-08-2002, godz. 18:13, Adam Heath pisze: > > > Er, you say free, but are restricting me to only use what is listed in the > > > depends. > So, what about kaffe? What about gcj? Why are you saying that sable is > better than these others? Yes, I looked at the alternatives. I wouldn't choose sablevm just because it is 'new and cool (and I am the maintainer)'. Facts that caused that I have choosen this set of tools. * kaffe It contains it's own JAVA_HOME environment, so it wouldn't make sense to just copy it. If you can build with kaffe - then stick with it and don't use free-java-sdk. However - be careful about licenses - see below. * kaffe and other GPL-licensed JVMs can only be used with GPL compatible software (i.e. no Apache style licenses!). See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL Not to mention that kaffe's classlib is GPL [1] * other LGPL licensed JVMs that use GNU Classlib I tried them and... they couldn't load .zip'ed or .jar'ed classes (do you imagine doing 'decompress .jars to /tmp before execution' in 'java' wrapper?!) I have not actually expirienced this, but I was told, that some of free JVMs, that have JIT engines - have seriosu and still not solved problems with JIT. * gcj - nice, but how do I use it? ;-) gcj can produce Java code, but you have to run the result somewhere this is even worse with software that uses for ex. ant to compile - you need to be able to run ant to compile them! I know gcj can compile to native code (on x86 platform only AFAIK) - but we didn't even agree (in java policy) how such packages should be named (let alone other problems and basic question: 'is this still java?'). I don't claim that SableVM (http://www.sablevm.org/) is world's best JVM. But it has some features that caused the decision: - is LGPL (no potential licensing problems) - uses GNU Classpath (active upstream and GPL+linking exception) - is Java bytecode interpreter (can even be debugged with gdb) which is proven to be solid - it's upstream is really interested in having robust and widely used JVM [2], not only another research tool for students - it is written in pure C, should be very easily portable to other architectures (currently it supports x86, not sure about alpha, but in few months sparc support should be added) Please take a look at our conversation on sablevm-dev ml http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/4435/0/ and you'll learn more about what we're aiming at. If you can propose better (single!) solution - I'd be glad to hear about it. > Debian should not be a popularity contest. It is technical contest. Technically better solutions win. I only want to gather technically (and legally - yes!) best tools in one place. Best regards Grzegorz B. Prokopski [1] It is not 100% clear if you can or cannot use GPLed JVM and GPLed Java libs with GPL-incompatible software. Different people have different understanding of things. Howeve I'd like to be on the safe side here, especially when it is possible. But if it were legally proven that you can use GPLed VM and GPLed libs with GPL-incompatible software - it would mean you can easily "workaround" the soul of GPL! [2] You can get sablevm from: deb http://debian.sente.pl/debian ./ apt-get install sablevm take a closer look that it has separate libs that can be used for ex. in mozilla plugin or by other programs. Unlike other JVMs in debian - it has separate package for classlib part that is architecture dependant and the rest. (any ideas are welcomed - I am preparing to upload all the stuff soon)
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature