Native libs & AWT (Was: Re: Further cleanups (Was: Re: [kaffe] dealing with gjdoc))

[Andrew John Hughes]

On 15/01/2008, Dalibor Topic <robilad at kaffe.org> wrote:
> Dalibor Topic wrote:
snip...
> * old kaffe AWT
>
> I'm currently cleaning up the old kaffe AWT to make it build again. I'll
> remove the classes
> copied over from GNU Classpath as far as possible, but I won't put work
> into making the
> Xlib peers actually work.
>
> Is someone interested in maintaining the old kaffe AWT code for 1.1.9?
> I'm sure the X peers
> are broken currently from looking at the compiler warnings, the qt peers
> probably don't
> build any more with Qt /  Qtopia releases, etc.
>
> If no one steps forward to maintain them in the four weeks, I'd like to
> mothball them. If we can't support class library features, there is no point in shipping them
> as part of the release, in particular since class library features as such are better suited for
> GNU Classpath.
>

I take it the Qt peers mentioned are ones that ship with Kaffe as
opposed to the Classpath ones (which are also dormant)?  If there's
anything worth salvaging, it might be best to throw it over the wall
to Classpath.

> * GNU MP big math
>
> I'd like to remove the feature and let GNU Classpath handle it for the
> next release.
>
> There is a patch from Raif for GNU Classpath that proposes an
> implementation of that feature for GNU Classpath, it would need someone to move it to the point
> where it could be merged into Classpath proper. The PR is Classpath/28664 in Classpath's
> bug tracker.
>
> The feature belongs into a class library, rather than a VM, in my opinion.
>

The bug seems to have been inactive for the best part of a year and a
half.  Where's the patch you mention? Has it been applied to
Classpath?  It's not attached to the bug tracker or mentioned there.

> * zlib zip
>
> It breaks static VM builds atm, so I'll turn it off for the default
> build. I don't want to
> remove it, since otherwise life would be very ugly on platforms with
> just the interpreter
> engine.
>
> But I'd like to try to rip it out and replace it with the implementation
> from
> OpenJDK, which also uses zlib internally. Chances are the Classpath/OpenJDK
> hybrid class library BrandWeg, announced by Andrew Hughes, will
> eventually use
> OpenJDK's zip implementation, then we'll be able to rip the code out
> completely.
>

With both zip and GNU MP support, there's a question of whether a
native or Java-based implementation is better.  Classpath currently
has Java-based implementations of both, which is an advantage for
Java-based VMs over OpenJDK, etc. but a performance issue for other
VMs such as Kaffe.  Maybe we need to provide alternatives perhaps via
a property that can be set by the VM? (Doing it at configure time
would make things tricky as the user or distro then has to choose, and
the VM would have to determine how Classpath was built, etc.)

> cheers,
> dalibor topic
>
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Cheers,
-- 
Andrew :-)

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