[kaffe] Kaffe Documentation

[Patrick Tullmann]

> I am very new to the world of kaffe, and I would like to understand it a
> little better.

Most documentation is in the FAQ/ subdirectory.  I think a porting
document has been promised, but I don't see it in CVS.

> In particular, my goal would be to port Kaffe (or a part of it, for some
> research purposes) to yet another platform, which is a VLIW architecture
> developed by HP & ST.  Unfortunately though, only an ANSI C compiler is
> available for such platform (i.e., no GCC), so I guess quite a lot of
> manual work is required.  And knowing very little about the structure of
> the source code makes things even worse.

Core of the vm is in kaffe/kaffevm/.  Threading and IO interfaces are
in systems/*/ subdirectory of kaffevm.  GC is in mem/ subdirectory.
Native methods for most java classes are in libraries/clib/native/.
There are exceptions to all those rules, of course.  :)

Feel free to keep notes as you explore the system, and submit that as
a FAQ.codelayout!

> For instance, I would love to try and compile only the core parts of
> the VM, no matter how much this would constrain its capabilities.
> Any suggestions on how to do that?

--with-engine=intrp and --without-x is about as minimal as you can get
currently (not very minimal).  There is a run-time debug option to
disable the GC, but it still gets compiled.

I think all the gooey platform-specific/compiler-specific bits are in
type definitions, and introspection to determine the initial thread
context.  Most of that code is in the top-level config/<platform>/<os>.

> Any comment (even "forget it, you'll never make it" if that is the
> case) is appreciated.

Enough people have ported Kaffe to weird platforms in the past, that I
think you'll have at least some luck.

-Pat

----- ----- ---- ---  ---  --   -    -      -         -               -
Pat Tullmann                                       tullmann at cs.utah.edu
    Not many people realize just how well known I am -- Anonymous