[kaffe] The trouble with Klasses.jar

[Dalibor Topic]

A regular source of bug reports seems to be the state
of Klasses.jar: it is usually a few patches behind the
source code. You are probably wondering why
Klasses.jar is not updated more regularly.

a) it is a generated file. You can "make Klasses" it
yourself.
b) it is large. Every update of Klasses.jar eats away
~1 MB on the CVS server.
c) it is large. Every update of Klasses.jar makes
people cvs updating transfer 1 MB of stuff that will
be out of sync with the source soon anyway.
d) it does not stay current for long. Currently there
is at least one patch for java libraries every week.

Unless there are platforms where making the
Klasses.jar file is impossible for some reason, I'd
like to propose the following scheme of things:

a) "make Klasses" should become a mandatory part of
the make process. Preferably using the supplied kjc
compiler, since surving the Klasses.jar compilation
using kjc means that your kaffe installation actually
works for something non-trivial. Since kjc can take a
while on older systems, kjc should be run in verbose
mode when compiling Klasses.jar ;) Automatically using
kjc also takes care of people using a broken version
of jikes to compile kaffe.
b) Reduce Klasses.jar in the CVS to a subset required
to run kjc.
c) Offer up-to-date Klasses.jar as separate download
on kaffe.org, in different versions: "standard,
optimized for speed, optimized for size"

what do you think?

best regards,

dalibor topic

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