Re: Classpath on linux-ppc

[Mark Wielaard]

Hoi,

On Mon, 2002-10-07 at 09:57, Arnaud Vandyck wrote:
> I'd like to contribute to the Classpath project but I'd like to know
> if it is possible to use classpath on ppc? If yes, which compiler and
> which runtime?

The easiest is to use gcj with libgcj. This works perfectly on PPC.
libgcj is based on GNU Classpath but a lot of merging work is still
needed. (See http://gcc.gnu.org/java/libgcj-classpath-compare.html)
Note that libgcj takes a lot of time (and disk space) to compile.
It is certainly not the nicest platform to do quick write, run, debug
cycles if you are hacking on the core libraries.

Kissme <http://kissme.sf.net/> is known to work on PPC with Classpath
and is easier to use. But the PPC support is not very well tested yet.
I got it running once, but have not yet done anything more then Hello
World with it. See for some issues I had then (that might already be
solved): <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=2007709>

SableVM <http://sablevm.sf.net/> does not really work on PPC with
Classpath and is not that easy to setup. I have some patches for it to
get it to run "Hello World". But to be honest I don't understand that
much of PowerPC assembly to know that I got it all right. The patches
can be found on the mailinglist:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=983089&forum_id=4154http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=1006086&forum_id=4154
I don't believe they were ever merged into CVS.

> I have a Blue G3 at home with Debian GNU/Linux (sarge) and there is a
> package named 'orp-classpath' but it seems like orp is not available
> for ppc.

I have a PowerMac G3/233 running Debian GNU/Linux (woody, but with a
newer binutils to work with gcj from CVS, I believe sarge is newer then
woody so you should be good to go). I saw that there is now a Debian
kissme and sablevm package at least for x86. You might want to ask the
package maintainers if they can try to create a PPC version.

> If someone can help, I'd be very interresting in contributing.

Great! Let us know how it goes. Setting up Classpath plus VM is sadly
non-trivial and using a PPC machine makes it especially interesting.
But we would of course like your help.

Groetjes,

Mark