On Monday 21 May 2007, Svenn Are Bjerkem wrote: > On 5/21/07, Dan McMahill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > one of those advantages is I'm not sure that java is as > > widely ported as c++. > > It is more widely ported than some of the applications > written in C++. In my very honest opinion, it doesn't help to > have a programming language that is ported to all kinds of > ancient or exotic hardware when installing and running on > WinXP isn't possible or only with very much extra hacking > work.
Java is widely ported enough. There is "gcj", which is a gcc front end for java. Claimed C++ porting problems are not problems with the language, but the tendency to use libraries and the like that have issues. Plain C++ ports fine. Now add some library, which uses some other library ... You need to port all of them. > Sun is taking efforts to really open their Java because they > see that they have a disadvantage on Linux systems. Once Java > is going to be as easy to install with any distribution > packaging tool as gcc is, we can start talking again about > platforms supported. GPL does have its advantages. I think the issue here is that many people see Java as a product made by Sun, rather than as a general purpose programming language. There needs to be competing implementations, like there are for C and C++. For us, who are putting out a suite of tools, licensed under GPL, it doesn't make sense to depend on a single company produced product. I suppose if it was licensed GPL ..... (it might be, but it wasn't initially) Like you say, GPL has its advantages. As to porting, and giving an example ... Compiling a recent version of Electric is not straightforward. _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
