[kaffe] Kaffe Documentation

[Gerlando Falauto]

Hi Patrick,

thanks for your reply.

> > 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.

I took a peek at the porting document you mentioned, but apparently it 
assumes as a prerequisite for the reader a little knowledge of the 
kaffe structure at least.
Besides, I wonder: if one wanted to contribute to the project, is he 
supposed to go thru the entire source tree and figure out all the internal 
mechanisms (or at least the core ones) by himself?

[...]
> 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!

I sure will. Although there is the risk of me writing down a bunch of
mistakes.

> > 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.

That's the options I used at the first try. I'm glad I got that right! ;-)

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

Does anybody know what extensions/libraries kaffe relies upon?
For instance I noticed long long integers, but I have no idea what else 
might be absolutely necessary for kaffe to get compiled without too much 
of a pain.

Thanks again,
Gerlando