[kaffe] Other question

[Dalibor Topic]

Hi Matt,

Matt R. Jezorek wrote:
> Well thank you now it builds great. So I got one other question. How 
> production ready would you say kaffe is. The reason I ask is
> 
> We are developing a Linux based distro for educational use. We will be 
> including java which is why i am testing kaffe as it is a open project which 
> we love to include instead of Sun's. Most will be used manly as a plugin to 
> the browser and Open Office.  So looking to include it in the distro. 
> 
> Let me know if you think its ready for prime-time.

Uh, depends on what 'prime-time' means ;)

I'm talking with OpenOffice developers about what they need exactly in 
terms of kaffe features to build OpenOffice. Running OOo's bits written 
in Java may or may not work, I don't think anyone has tried it yet. 
Though judging by their import statements, it seems that OOo first needs 
a good cleanup, since it appears to be using a lot of Sun's internal 
classes. How much of an impact that has I can't really say. If you want 
to build OpenOffice using kaffe, join the discussion on the developer 
mailing list on tools.openoffice.org.

There is a mozilla plugin for kaffe, but it hasn't been merged into the 
main tree due to lack of a developer who can fix it to work with mozilla 
latest xpcom incarnation. The sources, if you intend to work on it, are 
here: ftp://ftp.kaffe.org/pub/packages/kaffe-mozilla-oji [1]

One of the big prime time issues is that there is no swing. Kaffe works 
with Sun's swing 1.1.1, but it's a separate download under an awkward 
license. So you may find yourself with your users wanting to run 
LimeWire and replacing kaffe with Sun's JDK.

To sum it up: if you know what you need, and kaffe fits the need, go for 
it. It includes some useful bits from 1.4, 1.3 and 1.2 and almost a full 
implementation of 1.1.

But as a full scale replacement for the 1.4 JDK, it's not there yet. As 
a full scale replacement for JDK 1.2 neither. It should be O.K. for 1.1 
applications, if you still run some ;) And it's quite alright for many 
applications that don't need the more esoteric features of 1.4, like XML 
processing applications.

Of course, if you decide to use kaffe, we'd appreciate your bug reports 
and patches. You may even get rapid responses to bug reports, like today ;)

Writing a java runtime is a huge task, and we can use all the help we 
can get. Experimental distributors are welcome to join in the fun ;)

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] Speaking of mozilla: I've heard that Michael Koch is working on a 
mozila plugin for gcj.