MkLinux / LinuxPPC port, Allowed to Submit Patches?

Kevin B. Hendricks kaffe@rufus.w3.org
Mon, 20 Jul 1998 15:30:50 -0400


Hi,

I have a few questions about whether or not I am allowed to submit
patches to implement support for MkLinux / LinuxPPC.  I am curently a
member of the team that ports Sun's official JDK to Linux.  So I have
signed Sun's non-commercial license agreement and I am very familiar
with the Sun source code.

Am I still allowed to submit patches to implement kaffe on LinuxPPC /
MkLinux to you?  I would think yes, since these have nothing to do with
implementing the VM directly, they are just platform specific details,
but I wanted to ask first.

Also, am I allowed to contribute small bugfix patches for the kaffe vm
in general?


Now, about the MkLinux / LinuxPPC port:

- have have written sysdepCallMethod as a function and put it in a
separate file (because to make it work correctly I have to compile that
file at -O0 otherwise egcs will optimize it to the point it will no
longer work).  Is this okay?  I added a patch to
kaffe/kaffevm/Makefile.in to incorporate it

- I also have the offset into the jmp_buf for the stack pointer, but it
is not the same as for MachTen or AIX, where should I put this?

- Also, under our ABI, the stack pointer must be kept aligned to 16,
(the compiler handles this generally, but the jthread.c file creates a
thread context and initializes the stack pointer but does not allow for
alignment constraints on the stackpointer.  Do you want me to change the
PUT_SP macro to incorporate stack alignments and make the change there? 
I think other architectures also have stack pointer alignment issues.


If someone official would get back to me with some answers to these
questions I would be happy to contribute my patches to help get kaffe
going on linux ppc / mklinux.  With these patches, I have been able to
run HelloWorldApp, WidgetsDemo, and TextEdit successfully, but have been
unable to run kappletviewer or many other apps (like hotjava).  So my
patches still need some help, but they can help get others started.

I am currently not a member of this list, so please cc your replies
directly to me at kbhend@dogwood.tyler.wm.edu

Thanks,

Kevin B. Hendricks
kbhend@dogwood.tyler.wm.edu

Associate Professor, Operations and Information Technology
School of Business, College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, VA  23187-8795