This (and last) week on harmony-dev (Oct. 31 - Nov. 13 2005)

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

Last week I didn't find the time to write this summary, so this week's
posting covers both weeks. It was two busy weeks on harmony-dev (I have
183 emails marked in my inbox), with a code contribution from IBM this
week: "The code comprises a concrete implementation of the interface 
between virtual machine and class library that we have been discussing 
recently, together with a set of core Java classes". The contribution
can be found under http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HARMONY-14
in JIRA. In a reply to the mailing list announcement of this 
contribution Geir Magnusson Jr. made some comments which are also
interesting to read. Mark Wielaard then asked for a way to make it
possible to include this contribution in GNU Classpath too.
Jean-frederic Clere had a problem compiling it under SuSE 8.1, Tim
Ellison and George Harley helped him.
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c437082C4.2050005@gmail.com%3e]

David N. Welton started a thread called "half-baked idea? j2me" where
he suggested starting with implementing J2ME instead of J2SE because
it could be easier to implement. There was some discussion indicating
that this is not as easy as it seems first. Rodrigo Kumpera mentioned
that "IKVM, sablevm and jamvm all run on portable devices". Archie Cobbs
made an interesting point in this thread: He asked what the ideal
language to write a JVM implementation with would look like. He then
meant that Java would be pretty close to that when you extend it so you
would be able to do some C-like stuff too. Robin Garner answered that
"This is exactly how we see the dialect of Java that MMTk is written
in".
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c43669468.4090205@dedasys.com%3e]

In "[modularity] OSGi or ?", Geir Magnusson Jr., Mark Wielaard, Tim
Ellison and Dalibor Topic where discussing about ways to achieve
componentization. Mark explained that in GNU Classpath people "solve it
for their own platform separately". Tim posted a link to an earlier
thread where class library componentization was discussed. Dalibor did
something like that in Kaffe but "found the manual updating of component
sets during the rush of development on GNU Classpath to be, ugh,
somewhat boring work".
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c2A9A59B0-035F-41D0-981B-15DDF91CB797@apache.org%3e]

George Harley started the thread "Implementation comparisons" with an
email where he asks for "pinions on measuring how "correct" a new
implementation of a J2SE class is". The discussion after that was partly
about problems you could have (i.e. when the reference implementation by
Sun behaves not like required by the Spec. or when the Spec is
incomplete). The other part of the discussion was where to get the right
specification. While the Javadoc and other documents are the Spec, some
people mentioned that you should "always work from real books and not
just the javadoc that IBM and Sun publish publicly describing the core
library" (and of course problems with that where also discussed).
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3cOF797D9066.07CFA891-ON802570AE.0074F72C-802570AE.0075E8F9@uk.ibm.com%3e]

Enrico Migliore described some problems he still had when "compiling
bootJVM with MSVC". Most of this discussion was about compiler issues,
but I think the interesting part of the discussion started when Enrico
Migliore provided a link to a pthread implementation for WIN32. This
implementation is available under the LGPL and "compatibility issues
between the LGPL and Apache licenses are still unresolved". Apache is
working on that issue (it will be discussed at the ApacheCon), but for
now we should not have dependencies on LGPL libraries. Tim Ellison
mentioned that in IBMs contribution (which is not yet accepted for the 
sandbox) there is be a threading implementation which will (hopefully)
be part of the harmony project soon. Enrico finally made it: "bootJVM
compiled with MSVC".
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c436B1834.3000006@fatti.com%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c43704C60.5040402@fatti.com%3e]

Geir Magnusson Jr. started "VM/Class Library Interface (or "Storming the
Gates!  Take 3!")" with an email where he explains what he expects from
such an interface and that it would be time to define it now. Dan Lydick
explained where BootJVM is now and how he wants to solve this interface.
Archie Cobbs works with "a completely 'stock' unmodified version of
Classpath" in jchevm now. Leo Simons explained how to work with a
centralized version control system like SVN (which we use here) in this
thread (commit often, how to write commit comments, ...). There was lots
of details of the interface discussed in this thread, I think everyone
who is interested can read this in the mailing list archive.
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c89DB404C-2E97-49E8-92B6-05113E8FF0DB@apache.org%3e]

In the thread "[arch] Interpreter vs. JIT for Harmony VM" Steve Shih-wei
Liao explained in some detail the requirements for an interface between
the VM and the Execution Engine which supports both interpreters and
JITs. He wrote it "according to the 4 areas in the previous email:
abstracting over the mode of execution, asynchronous compilation,
reentrancy, and supporting the mixing of JIT and interpreter".
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c7cbeaf9e0511080720y35948846g210a69cd65931c6d@mail.gmail.com%3e]

In other threads... Jean-frederic Clere and Dan Lydick discussed about
some configuration issues of BootJVM in "[BootJVM] configure". Archie 
Cobbs and Tim Ellison where talking about some finalization issues in
"Some questions about the architecture". Archie Cobbs (who contributed
jchevm [which is not called ArchieVM :( ]) is our newes Apache Harmony 
committer. Leo Simons wrote "The Unofficial "Harmony, Licensing, the
Universe and everything" FAQ" where he answeres several questions which
have always been around on the list. Mark Wielaard wrote some
interesting comments here. Leo Simons wrote about "Harmony @ Apachecon
US 2005". Dan Lydick sent in a status info for BootJVM in a mail called
"Current changes to bootJVM source base". Mark Wielaard announced "ANN:
GNU Classpath "95% and counting" 0.19 released".
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c28398403.1130786044737.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200510.mbox/%3c436677B8.90203@dellroad.org%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c135763B2-23CA-4A30-B2A1-9076E9F36999@apache.org%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c20051109133808.GB39347@bali.sjc.webweaving.org%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c20051107182938.GL23280@localhost.localdomain%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c11369598.1131141869766.JavaMail.root@elwamui-lapwing.atl.sa.earthlink.net%3e]
[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-harmony-dev/200511.mbox/%3c1131028605.22008.100.camel@localhost.localdomain%3e]

<p>BTW: You might have noticed that I didn't list all people involved in
the discussions this week. I'm not sure if this is really nessessary,
but I'd really appreciate feedback about this. Would you want to be
listed here when you've been involved in a discussion, or is it enough
when I only mention some people which wrote important postings?

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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