Re: GCJ Native Proposal
On Sat, Mar 12, 2005 at 01:13:23PM -0600, Jerry Haltom wrote:
> Attention Java Maintainers: This Effects You
>
>
> This is a recap of an ad-hoc discussion a number of Java maintainers had
> a few minutes ago in #debian-java concerning our direction with regards
> to including native GCJ compiled Jar files in our packages.
>
> Brief overview: gcj-4.0 is now in experimental. What it gives us is the
> ability to package native binary .so files along side their .jar
> counterparts for usage with gij (the GCJ interpreter, a virtual
> machine). When these .so files are present (in the correct location,
> registered with the correct mechanism) gij will load them automatically
> and use them in the place of the corresponding .jar file. The main
> motivation for this is speed. There is no JIT overhead involved and it
> runs native, not interpreted. It is worth noting that the Kaffe folks
> want to integrate support for this binary interface into Kaffe.
>
> This begs the question then: How do we make these native .so files
> available in our packages to our users. A number of ideas were
> considered:
>
> a) Include the .so along with the .jar in the same deb.
> b) Create a separate package for the .so.
>
> The first one (a) can be discounted because it would convert every Java
> package into a binary: arch package. This isn't feasible for obvious
> reasons: we like archive space!
>
> The second one is the best one. It minimizes archive space. It will hit
> the buildds however, as it requires the binary-indep build process in
> order to run binary-arch.
I vote for (b). Fedora does (a) but that had a larger discussion about
it and the only readon they dont did was that RPM has no Recommends.
> The -java package would ideally Recommend the second package.
Good idea. And the native library need to depend on exact the same
Source-Version of the -java package.
> I would like to name the secondary native packages with a -jbi prefix
> (Java Binary Interface). Some people like the name -bcabi because that
> is what the GCJ folks tend to refer to it as. BC ABI: Binary Compatible
> Application Binary Interface. I don't think bcabi is descriptive at all.
-jbi is a bad name as none else on this planet knows the interface under
this name I would prefer -bcabi (as this is the name its called
upstream) or -gcj (to make clean where it comes from).
Michael
--
Java Trap: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
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