[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: WTF: All those eclipse packages (and som gcj questions)



On Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 01:59:54AM +0100, Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I do find it really great to have eclipse in debian (finally). Only I'm
> a little confused by all those new packages. So here come my questions,
> please someone shed some light on this:
> 
> 1. Do I understand correctly that the "ecj" is a java 1.3/1.4 compiler
> that I can get either as "pure-java-version" (via eclipse-ecj) or as
> native binary (via eclipse-ecj-gcj). What benefits has ecj above gcj?

ECJ from Eclipse 3.1.x is a Java 5.0 compliant compiler. It can handle
all language enhancements of Java 5.0. GCJ 4.0 and the upcoming 4.1
cannot handle Java 5.0 stuff. They are more or less Java 1.4 compliant
with support for some classes from 5.0 but no language extensions.
GCJ can produce bytecode OR native code. ECJ can only produce bytecode.
A natively compiled ECJ is mostly faster in producing byecode than GCJ.
 
> 2. Those eclipse-* packages that have a eclipse-*-gcj counterpart: Is
> the gcj-version (i.e. natively compiled plugins) faster? What are their
> benefit above the normal variant?

When running eclipse with GCJ eclipse is much faster when the
eclipse-*-gcj packages are installed because GCJ only integrates a
simple interpreter, no JIT, and it can run the native code then.
Another benefit is that the native Jar libraries are some sort of
shared libraries when can be loaded faster then Jar files themself.

Currently you will only have a benefit when using GCJ to run Eclipse. No
other runtime uses these libraries yet. Kaffe had support for GCJ
compiled jars in the past and they plan to support it again.

> 3. If I choose to use Sun's SDK is there any benefit at all using the
> natively compiled packages? 

No.


Cheers,
Michael
-- 
Escape the Java Trap with GNU Classpath!
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

Join the community at http://planet.classpath.org/



Reply to: