>Why has it been so difficult to port Sun's Java2 source to Linux?
I have no specific knowledge - I'm not part of the Blackdown team,
have never seen the JDK sources, etc. But I can guess :-)
The port is a spare-time effort with non-open source.
Java2 is a hell of a lot of code. No matter how good it is, when it's
big it's hard to port.
The Blackdown folks seem to be adding a lot of value back to the Java
port. How many of their patches have gone back into the Java tree?
Java hits threads very hard. In particular, the native threads port of
Java stresses the glibc threading framework (and the kernel!) more
than most systems. So you have to contend not just with portability
problems, not just bugs in the Java sources, but bugs and misfeatures
in the Linux implementation too.
Memory management is tough to port. Remember how long the Linux JDK
didn't free memory?
AWT gives porters a hard time. I don't personally understand this,
except Xlib is icky.
I'd be interested to hear what the Blackdown folks can say on the
subject. In particular, what about Linux makes it hard to port? Maybe
some of us can help improve the Linux side..
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
. . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
