On Nov 28, 2007 2:51 PM, Tim Ellison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Given that the Harmony class library natives are implemented in terms of > the portlib functions [1], either (a) you implemented the portlib > functions to work on the Android platform, or (b) changed the natives to > call the OS directly.
We did (b), and it is attributable at least in part due to the way the project progressed: We started with an entirely new library implementation (not Harmony based at all), and it was only relatively late in Android's history (after the project was already a going concern for at least a couple years) that we started importing code from Harmony to flesh out the implementation. At this point, maybe it makes sense for Dalvik to start using portlib, but I have a clarifying question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? In particular, the Android project is generally very sensitive to unnecessary bloat and slowness. If the changes needed to use the portability layer really and truly wouldn't add extra calls (including in bytecode), extra code (ditto), or extra memory usage, and if the project wouldn't be able to reduce bloat by moving further away from the portlib style of things, then it sounds like it would absolutely make sense to adopt it, since (per my previous note) *not* using it would be an *unnecessary* difference between the two codebases. Thanks for your help, -dan
