Harmony Cross-Compilation

[Daniel Qarras <dq...@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

you've probably received tons of comments,
suggestions, wishes, etc so I guess one more cannot
hurt.

Summary: please make it possible to cross-compile
Harmony.

Background: I work with embedded systems and I've
learnt that Sun's slogan "Write once, run everywhere"
surely doesn't apply in the embedded world - there's
simply no JVM for platforms like Linux/MIPS or
NetBSD/ARM from Sun. Perhaps even the server side with
less popular HW suffers the same problems (Alpha,
S390, HP-PA, who knows?). So I think it would be great
if I could take Harmony and just cross-compile it for
my platform of choice, no matter what OS or HW I'm
using. I also think that it's much easier to make
build system (and the code) cross-compilable right
from the beginning than to find out later that a
painful overhaul is needed.

Speculation: People might also be intrested in using
Harmony to create J2ME runtime platform for their
embedded devices once Harmony/J2SE seems to be mature.
At that point cross-compilation support is essential.

Thanks,
Dan.



		
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Re: Harmony Cross-Compilation

[Ian Darwin <ia...@darwinsys.com>]

> Speculation: People might also be intrested in using
> Harmony to create J2ME runtime platform for their
> embedded devices once Harmony/J2SE seems to be mature.
> At that point cross-compilation support is essential.

No, it isn't, because by then, your average cell phone will have enough
computing power to compile Harmony in under five minutes.

N.B. Don't forget to attach several ":-)" to the above after reading it.

Re: Harmony Cross-Compilation

[Ravi kiran Gorrepati <ra...@cs.unm.edu>]

On Fri, 13 May 2005 17:25:20 -0600, Brett Wuth <wu...@castrov.cuug.ab.ca>  
wrote:

> In the C world cross-compiling works across both HW and operating
> systems.  I too would like to see this feature in Harmony.

I should have put this more properly. My mistake. But, it is always
easier to write a cross-compiler that cheats the underlying runtime,
that it is behaving to the conventions. Write a native code wrapper,
written in your favorite lang, on your preferred OS and then just
branch to the the generated JVM compiler code, that is spit by the host
compiler(This approach even saves you from respecting the conventions
of architecture!!). Your generated code, is just a stream of instructions,
and is free from all conventions.

	Though this approach is not ideal, it lets us
keep the VM simple and understandable.
-- 
Ravi

Re: Harmony Cross-Compilation

[Brett Wuth <wu...@castrov.cuug.ab.ca>]

Ravi kiran Gorrepati writes:
 > > So I think it would be great
 > > if I could take Harmony and just cross-compile it for
 > > my platform of choice, no matter what OS or HW
 > 
 > Cross-compiling, if I am right, works across architectures,
 > but not operating systems.

In the C world cross-compiling works across both HW and operating
systems.  I too would like to see this feature in Harmony.

Regards,
-- 
Brett Wuth  wuth@castrov.cuug.ab.ca wuth@acm.org
Box 1251-U, Pincher Creek, Alberta T0K 1W0, CANADA  Tel:+1 403 627-2460
PGPKey ID=23276D81 FingerPrint=E4F8EDEECBE01AD2FA3D8B2D94B1A292
What is the meaning of life?!  Yes.

Re: Harmony Cross-Compilation

[Ravi kiran Gorrepati <ra...@cs.unm.edu>]

> So I think it would be great
> if I could take Harmony and just cross-compile it for
> my platform of choice, no matter what OS or HW

Cross-compiling, if I am right, works across architectures,
but not operating systems. Atleast that is what I have seen
in Jikes. You generally endup writing a different wrapper
around the compiled code(which respects the runtime conventions
for that OS), for different operating systems.

-- 
Ravi