This is the announcement of JIGS Version 0.7.0. What is JIGS ? ============== JIGS is a free (LGPL) Java Interface for GNUstep; it can automatically wrap Objective-C libraries based on GNUstep making them accessible directly to the Java programmer as if they were Java libraries. As a side effect, the whole engine can be used in the reverse way: JIGS provides a high level API to allow Objective-C programmers to start java virtual machines inside GNUstep Objective-C code and access transparently java objects in the java virtual machine as if they were objective-C objects. Authors ======= JIGS was brought to you by Nicola Pero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Brainstorm Computer Solutions (http://www.brainstorm.co.uk) funded the development of JIGS. Maintainers =========== JIGS is currently maintained by Nicola Pero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Release Notes for JIGS version 0.7 ================================== This release adds support for morphing of selectors. This improvement required extensive additions to the JIGS core engine and to the WrapCreator tool. Release Notes for JIGS version 0.6 ================================== This release supports building wrappers of debugging libraries, and keeping and running them on the same system as wrappers of not-debugging libraries. Release Notes for JIGS version 0.5 ================================== This release includes a first very partial and experimental wrapper of the gnustep gui library; WrapCreator supports prerequisite libraries; bug fixes. Release Notes for JIGS version 0.4 ================================== This release includes a first partial wrapper of the gnustep base library; the WrapCreator tool has been modified to parse the header file only once, so it is now much faster. Many bug fixes too. Release Notes for JIGS version 0.3 ================================== First release of WrapCreator, an automatic wrapper tool for JIGS. The wrapper can automatically generate the code to wrap an objective-C library to Java. Release Notes for JIGS version 0.2 ================================== Alpha support for subclassing an Objective-C class in Java. Better support for exposing Objective-C class methods to Java. Release Notes for JIGS version 0.1 ================================== This is the first public release. While the core engine is mostly working, the high level APIs and tools are still missing. In particular, we don't have a wrapper tool yet. And, the base gnustep library has not yet been wrapped. The core engine is organized in the following way: * A little library (ObjcRuntimeUtilities) to programmatically add classes and methods to the objective-C runtime while it is running; * A little library (GSJNI) of utilities to program JNI using GNUstep. * A little class (NSJavaVirtualMachine) keeping track of the java virtual machine presently running and incidentally providing a simple API to start a java virtual machine. * The real core engine (JIGS itself), built on top of the previous layers. Most of it is written in Objective-C, but part is in Java. Version 0.1 contains an example of an objective-C gnustep library wrapped by hand and exposed as a Java library. Following this example, it should not be too difficult to wrap by hand simple libraries. Tests and examples of the reverse (starting a java virtual machine in an Objective-C executable and accessing java objects from objective-C) have been written, but not included in JIGS 0.1. Software Needed to Use JIGS =========================== To use the JIGS, you need: * A version of the Objective-C runtime library compiled as a shared library (and working with GNUstep). Please refer to the INSTALL file for more information on how to compile and install it. This is needed only to load objective-C libraries into a running java virtual machine, while you don't need it to start a java virtual machine inside an already running objective-C app or tool. Please note that there are no examples yet of doing the latter in JIGS though, so if you want to play comfortably, getting a shared Objective-C runtime library is recommended. * GNUstep make package and base library. * A java development environment supporting JNI 1.2. Special Thanks ============== To Richard Frith-Macdonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for countless discussions and help during development of JIGS 0.1. Obtaining JIGS ============== JIGS is available at http://www.gnustep.it/jigs/Download/ New releases and snapshots can usually be found on the JIGS homepage, http://www.gnustep.it/jigs/. You may always get the latest version of JIGS from the GNUstep CVS - the module is called 'java'. Bug Reports =========== The best way to submit bug reports and fixes is to email them to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. _______________________________________________ Bug-gnustep mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnustep
