Wow! This rocks. And will probably force the competition to go Linux too.
As a partner of Inprise, I hope they're fast :)
VisualAge does not use the IBM JDK. It uses a completely proprietary,
embedded VM, which is actually a Smalltalk VM (VA is written in ST)
emulating Java (and doing it quite well, thanks to IBM's Universal VM
technology). The big problem is being always a few months behind the latest
official JDK. But one thing is sure, now that IBM will do VA for Linux,
it's 100% sure that IBM JDK will follow.
I have discussed that a bit with IBM JVM's project manager while doing my
Java Performance Report (check the JavaLobby), and at that time, he wouldn't
tell me about IBM's plans/schedules of porting anything to Linux... but he
told me that their VM, jitter, included, is extremely high-level and
portable code and they can move to Linux in a flash, should they decide to
do it.
For whoever is wondering about their sources. The answer is yes and no.
Lots of the good things in IBM JDK, both performance and bugfix arenas, are
classified as "improvements in shared code" -- i.e. anything licensed from
Sun, basically everything except the jitter. IBM's improvements on such
areas are returned to Sun, this is part of the license. So we won't likely
grab any JDK sources from IBM, but their work will leak to future versions
of Sun's official JDK. That's the rule for JDK1.1; for Java2, I believe the
SCSL allows IBM to keep for themselves the improvements, BUT they will share
it anyways (I am 99% sure of that). The bad news is, there's no open source
ibmjitc in the horizon (contains a few crown jewels)... maybe even the high
performance interpreter and most cool things in the VM, like their garbage
collector, would be excluded because they're original IBM code not covered
by the license (the jitter, in particular, is 100% IBM work). But we may
have yet another surprise.
My bet is that the IBM JDK won't be too fast (like, say, next week for a
beta) because they will go straight to Java2. By this time most activity of
IBM's JVM work must be focused in the 1.2 VM, so it doesn't make much sense
starting more ports of 1.1 now, even if it's easy to do (it's less easy to
support along the way).
----- Original Message -----
From: Christian Cryder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, June 06, 1999 7:05 PM
Subject: RE: Something Special for Linux Developers on alphaWorks
> But will it include the new IBM JVM?
>
> --------------------------------------------
> Christian Cryder
> Software Engineer - UHR Infrastructure
> REALM Information Technologies - http://www.realminfo.com
> Adventures in UHR - http://realm.granitepeaks.com
> Plugin Version Control for Java (PVCj 1.0) - http://www.pssg.com/pvcj
> --------------------------------------------
> "What a great time to be a geek"
> --------------------------------------------
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alexander V. Konstantinou [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Thursday, June 10, 1999 9:57 AM
> > To: Michael Emmel
> > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: Re: Something Special for Linux Developers on alphaWorks
> >
> >
> > VISUALAGE FOR JAVA TECHNICAL PREVIEW FOR LINUX
> > ==================================================================
> > http://www.software.ibm.com/ad/r/99enews6/linux/
> >
> > You asked for it... you got it! In response to your overwhelming
> > enthusiasm for VisualAge for Java and your petition for a Linux
> > edition, we will offer a technical preview of VisualAge for Java,
> > Professional Edition for Linux. We'll be showing the technical
> > preview at the upcoming JavaOne conference and we'll be making
> > the technical preview available for download at VisualAge Developer
> > Domain. For more information, read this letter to the
> > developer community to find out what you can do to bring
> > about a general release of this product to the market.
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
>
>
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