This week on harmony-dev (Oct. 2 - Oct. 8 2005)

[David Tanzer <st...@guglhupf.net>]

There were two votes running this week. The vote "[vote] Accept JIRA
contribution HARMONY-3 : Archie Cobbs' Contribution of JCVM" has been
accepted with 7x +1, 0x 0 and 0x -1 votes. The vote "[vote] Accept JIRA
contribution HARMONY-6 : Daniel Lydick's contribution of a new JVM" has
been accepted with 6x +1, 0x 0 and 0x -1 votes. In both cases I don't 
know which votes were binding.
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200509.mbox/%3c41287D45-DD82-4276-A0DF-F7263EB5BD8B@apache.org%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3cB893CF31-912C-4E9E-A88C-2FFA346CAC6D@apache.org%3e]

In the discussion about the vote "[vote] Accept JIRA contribution
HARMONY-3 : Archie Cobbs' Contribution of JCVM" Andy Oliver, Geir 
Magnusson Jr. and Tim Ellison discussed the voting mechanism. Geir and
Andy explained how it works, and both want to avoid fractional votes
and preferres written comments instead. Tim then clarified that he 
didn't refer to the mechanics of voting, but he wanted to know what a
"+1" implies and wants to be sure that "'bulk' contributions have the
paperwork in order". Geir said that from now on the PPMC will have to
accept the Authorized Contributor Questionnaire as well as the Bulk
Contribution Checklist before a vote so "people will be sure that the
basic safeguards we want to have for exposure are in place".
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c72330652.1128180677710.JavaMail.root@set.superlinksoftware.com%3e]

Andy Oliver started the thread "RT: Escape analysis" which is about
optimizations a JIT / GC can make by analyzing which objects "escape" a
thread. Andy also suggested "descoping", i.e. to have a mechanism so {}
doesn't build a new scope. Tim Ellison mentioned problems with
polymorphism and escape analysis. Robin Garner and John Whaley talked
about stack allocation in this context. Florian Weimer, Tom Tromey and
Geir Magnusson Jr. where also involved in this discussion.
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c72145349.1128221529793.JavaMail.root@set.superlinksoftware.com%3e]

In "[project policy] Author credit and attribution" Geir Magnusson
Jr. asked if we should use author tags in the code or just maintain a
list with all the contributors like HTTPD does
(http://httpd.apache.org/contributors/). Mark Wielaard explained how
this (and other things) are done in GNU Classpath and recommended to
read the GNU Classpath Hacker Guide. In this discussion it was also
pointed out that we need a code style guide "so that the code looks like
it is part of a whole". It looks like the we'll have a contributors page
which will also contain a list of all bulk contributions, and AUTHORS
files, but no author tags in the code for now.
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c12ED61E0-1039-42DF-B353-C2865A440797@apache.org%3e]

Geir Magnusson Jr. asked in "opinions on structure packing in C?"
about "the use of -fpack-struct vs #pragm pack() vs just not packing"
because he ran into this issue when he tried to get Dan's bootVM to
run under windows. Several people mentioned it's too early for
optimizations. Tim Ellison suggested to use the standard layout of
the compiler and pack a struct with pragmas only when nessessary.
Dan Lydick explained why he used structure packing in the bootVM code.
Some people suggested to recompile the libc and distribute it with the
VM. Tom Tromey mentioned that this is not practical for a server or
desktop environment, since this effects other libraries too and we'd
have to rebuild a large part of a typical distro. Other people involved
in this thread were: Enrico Migliore, Archie Cobbs and Robin Garner.
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c1D20E04B-BEC0-4015-8126-13ADFDF0A843@apache.org%3e]
(Ok, maybe I really oversimplified this thread, but people interested in
the details can just follow the link and the follow-ups ;-) ).

Steve Liao replied in "[arch] Interpreter vs. JIT for Harmony VM"
that "it seems the Harmony modular framework needs to allow both JIT and
interpreter modules to be plugged in", and that maybe a new thread about
these issues will be nessessary. I have become a committer to the
Harmony project, I'm glad and proud that the PPMC offered me the
committer status.
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c7cbeaf9e0510021617u45287e32kcd804a113c027b05@mail.gmail.com%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c529CDA4D-C332-46D9-BF04-0531BF84743E@apache.org%3e]

Regards, David.

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-- 
David Tanzer, Haghofstr. 29, A-3352 St. Peter/Au, Austria/Europe
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--
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