Re: Eclipse and main (was: junit-freenet)
Hi,
On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 23:52, Jan Schulz wrote:
> * Mark Wielaard wrote:
> >Helmer Krämer recently fixed some things in Kaffe to get Eclipse to
> >startup (doesn't do much more then startup, but it is a start):
> >http://www.kaffe.org/pipermail/kaffe/2003-July/043015.html
> >And Eclipse of course "runs" with gcj:
> >http://klomp.org/mark/gij_eclipse/
> >(Only one of the patches on that page hasn't made it into gcj 3.3.)
>
> Nice information. The problem will be that eclipse will start using
> 1.4 features after M3 (end of August) and I don't know how long it
> will take to 'catch up'...
GNU Classpath and gcj already support large parts of 1.4. And some of
the support will actually be in Eclipse itself (for example it comes
with its own compiler that is used to compile its own plugins so that
must support all [compiler] features the plugins actually use.)
But you are right this is actually a big concern for the free software
community. It would be very appreciated that as soon as Eclipse enters
Debian main some people would help us either convince the Eclipse
developers not to use facilities that don't have free implementations or
to help us develop those facilities for use on free platforms.
> BTW, what is actually required to get a java app into main: Running,
> running in most cases or running like with Sun/BD JDK?
For a program written in the java language to get into main it has to be
free software of course and it should be possible to compile and/or run
it with free programs also available from Debian main. For most java
programs (except those using the Swing GUI library) this is now
possible.
The nice thing is that even something as big as Eclipse can now run
using only components of Debian main. This is almost possible now
(although even Debian unstable doesn't have all the latest versions of
the free java like environments yet). Either through gcj/gij (it is
slow, but works even for CVS team working or installing remote plugins
through the Update Manager). Or kaffe (although that is buggy now and is
only available through CVS now). But also through IKVM.NET which can be
used to run Eclipse through Mono! Really cool, although not the fastest
solution: http://weblog.ikvm.net/default.aspx?date=2003-05-10T00:00:00
(What is really exciting about this last option is that it neatly
combines the java and .net/C# world. That is what I call real free
software innovation. You have two proprietary platforms controlled by
two companies. Each trying to keep "their" users/developers locked into
one of the two camps. But you now also have free implementations that
can actually be used by users/developers to take back their freedom and
combine the best of those two worlds!)
> Would it make sense to split libswt2.1-gtk2-java out of 'eclipse' and
> get it into main? This would mean that I have to rebuild eclipse
> (including libswt2.1-motif-java) and libswt2.1-gtk2-java and get both
> from CVS, as there aren't downloads for them...
I most definitely think so. This is actually what Anthony Green has been
doing for RHUG <http://sources.redhat.com/rhug/>. For example he
provides the Eclipse compiler (compiled to a native program and shared
library using gcj): http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java/2003-07/msg00193.html
And he also provides a snapshot for a separate SWT build for gcj:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java/2002-11/msg00280.html
Note that he uses gcj for everything to compile it into native code..
This has two big advantages. 1) It is amazingly fast since you don't
need to startup a JVM, interpret or just in time compile byte code but
just have a normal binary program. 2) Since he creates shared libraries
for everything the code is actually shared between processes. So a Ant
process can reuse the code of the eclipse byte code compiler that might
also be used by Tomcat to compile some JSP page when running on the same
system. (And yes, he actually has gcj compiled Ant and Tomcat packages!)
RHUG: http://sources.redhat.com/rhug/ really is cool. The only sad thing
is that it is all build as RPMs done for RedHat systems.
Would be really nice to also have real Debian packages of all his stuff.
(I asked him if he would like someone to maintain debian dirs/control
files for RHUG and he would definitely appreciate that.)
Cheers,
Mark
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