[openbeos] Re: Java
- From: Bernd Korz <bernd.korz@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 08:16:26 +0100
ZETA does not have that memory problem you found in R5. But i can check our
sourcetree and give out the work we did on JAVA. So this could get merged
together or get used as base.
Bernd
On 2006-11-13 at 23:30:38 [+0100], Karl vom Dorff <haikubounties@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> With this announcment: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3337915997.html
>
> It would seem it might be beneficial to start organizing a Java porting
> project/team? Even if it's just organizing and coordinating developers.
>
> I say this because I spoke with a couple of developers about the stalled
> Java port by Beunited when there was a bounty for a Java port at
> Haikubounties. Besides the politics and paperwork with Sun, there were three
> main obstacles they (Bryan Varner & Simon Gauvin) claimed towards porting
> Java to Haiku.
>
> 1) Haiku is not self-serving
>
> 2) BeOS is closed source and there were some memory management issues in the
> OS that made finishing the port difficult if not impossible.
>
> 3) Java was not opened.
>
> It seems now #3 is addressed, and #2, well Haiku is open and those problems
> can be addressed, and #1, is being worked on.
>
> Here's some interesting points from Bryan:
>
> "BeOS R5 (and I'm guessing Zeta too) have problems with the way their memory
> protection mechanisms work (they aren't really posix compliant) that make it
> virtually impossible to implement the hotspot virtual machine properly. I
> have a workaround from another developer sitting in my in box, complete with
> sample code that _may_ solve the problem. If this work, I'm guessing that
> 75% of our existing bugs will disappear."
>
> "There's essentially three major things left to do with the port. Get the
> virtual machine to be truly stable, finish the Java2D implementation, and
> the Sound / Media framework. The virtual machine has never been a pillar of
> stability on BeOS -- which is why I quit working on the Java2D
> implementation. There's no point in putting more time into making frameworks
> / features work if the core execution engine isn't going to run well."
>
> "But the single biggest problem at this point is simply this:
> We were porting java 1.4.2, which is now at least 2 years obsolete. Sun
> doesn't want to assign any resources to help us finish that port, they want
> us to migrate to 1.6... which would be a monumental task -- one that we
> should probably take, but a huge task no less."
>
> "There's a few system calls missing in Haiku (last I tried, about two months
> ago) that kept the current java builds from running on Haiku. It was
> -really- close to working last I checked. The issue is that I don't think
> Haiku is stable enough to be fully self-hosting yet. Once that's solved
> (matter of time) getting java compiled will be an easy piece of cake,
> there's only about 3 libraries (libdl, realpath, cpio, iirc) that needed to
> be installed on R5 to get things going. "
>
> Most importantly, Bryan's willingness to work on the project:
>
> "We (Andrew and I) wrote 2 AWT implementations. We've gotten Hotspot to
> bootstrap on R5, we can do it again on Haiku, and I think with Haiku we'd be
> able to do it a LOT better."
>
> "If you're willing to track down people, I'm more than willing to help by
> donating code and even time at least one night a week. I miss working on
> this."
>
> A couple of quotes from Simon Gauvin about Java on Haiku:
>
> "I suspect that by the time Haiku is ready to compile Java then 1.6 will be
> open source and there should be no problem to get the source. Either way,
> the source is easy to get from Sun, that's not the problem, and
> beunited.org certainly can support souce storage as it has in the past.
> The real challenge is getting the Java 1.6 to pass the test suite on Haiku
> so that Java can be distributed legally. That may change with open source
> Java, but it's not the case now. So in short, there is nothing to do but
> wait for Haiku to be ready and 1.6 to be released."
>
> These were extracts from June '06.
>
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