Javac, Jikes and java 1.1-1.3

[Matthew Dornquast <ma...@cata.com>]

My company is ready to move from java 1.1 into 1.2 or 1.3 (YAY!), but javac
is crappy slow (BOO), and we've grown addicted to jikes (YAY!)

so in the spirit of, "No question is a stupid question"

Q: Can I use Jikes to compile my code for Java 1.1, Java 1.2 and Java 1.3?

I think the answer is yes.  But I'm not "you bet your life" confident, so I
thought I'd ask my peers (supeers?) on the list.

I think the answer is "Go ahead and bet your life Matt".  So long as the
language spec isn't incompatible between version (say java 1.1 and 1.2) and
the VM/class bytecode specification doesn't change, I'm ok.

I mean, byte code is byte code right?  I make sure jikes has access to the
java runtime classes for java 1.3 when compiling and I'm golden.  I tried
this, and for my few simple test cases, it seemed to work.

I imagine an Ant build script where I do "developer builds" with jikes--
which screams, and javac with full optimizations on/debug off for production
build/release.

-Matthew

Re: Javac, Jikes and java 1.1-1.3

[Stefan Bodewig <bo...@bost.de>]

Matthew Dornquast <ma...@cata.com> wrote:

> Q: Can I use Jikes to compile my code for Java 1.1, Java 1.2 and
> Java 1.3?

Yes, yes and yes. With the added benefit, that jikes will show the
same bugs for any JDK while the different javacs will have different
bugs 8-).

Actually jikes will do some better checking than javac does,
especially it won't generate bytecode that is invalid for JDK 1.3 as
the javac of JDK 1.1 does.

> I imagine an Ant build script where I do "developer builds" with
> jikes-- which screams, and javac with full optimizations on/debug
> off for production build/release.

Well, currently all you'd have to do is turning build.compiler to
jikes or modern/classic if you feel so inclined. Personally I don't
have any problems with using jikes for production code as well.

Stefan

Re: Javac, Jikes and java 1.1-1.3

[Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>]

At 10:44  14/11/00 -0600, you wrote:
>My company is ready to move from java 1.1 into 1.2 or 1.3 (YAY!), but javac
>is crappy slow (BOO), and we've grown addicted to jikes (YAY!)
>
>so in the spirit of, "No question is a stupid question"
>
>Q: Can I use Jikes to compile my code for Java 1.1, Java 1.2 and Java 1.3?

yep. It is faster, has less bugs the javac and is more compliant to
language spec (thou still misses somethings). Personally I wouldn't use
javac ever again even for production code but YMMV
Cheers,

Pete

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