dummyless static methods

[Tim Wilkinson]

Per Bothner wrote:
> 
> Currently, when Kaffe calls a static method, it passes an extra
> dummy first argument.  As far as I can tell, this serves no purpose,
> except for compatibility with Sun's old deprecated native interface.
> The extra argument wastes stack space, and on many architectures wastes
> an extra instruction to push the dummy argument.  Worse (from my point
> of view) is that they complicate interoperability between Kaffe,
> Gcc, and Gdb, and between C++ and Java.  I could go into detail,
> but that could get very long-winded.  But I really would like to
> get rid of the dummy argument.  It would require us to change
> many native methods, but it is better to make change sooner rather
> than later.  (When it comes to compatibility with JNI, that is a
> separate issue.  My plan is to support both JNI and a more
> efficient but less portable interface.  I can go into detail
> in another message.)
> 
> Any good arguments against (or for) getting rid of the dummy argument?

None of which I'm aware.  The dummy argument was a later addition to be
"compatiable" with Sun's native libraries.  Since the Kaffe interface
will become it's own system (leaving the JNI as the standard) I see no
reason to keep this.

Tim

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  Tim Wilkinson                         Tel/Fax: +44 181 446 1309
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