Re: Updates to GNU Classpath port of JRVM

[Brian Jones]

John Leuner <address@hidden> writes:

> > > I've updated the files necessary to get a working bootimage out of JRVM
> > > 2.1.1 (latest CVS) and GNU Classpath (latest CVS) at: 
> > > 
> > > http://people.debian.org/~jewel//jikes/jikesport/2.1.1CVS/port.html
> > 
> > John, what prevents us from incorporating the necessary changes into
> > Classpath CVS?  I'll assume we're talking a compilation/packaging
> > issue until I get more time to look at this.
> 
> There are two parts:
> 
> 1. The VM-specific files. Ideally these would go into the JRVM CVS tree,
> but I fear there are licensing issues.

Yes, but we can include them if need be.  Certainly if jikesrvm want to
keep this working they would I think want or demand to keep them...

> 2. The modified Classpath files. I believe that to include these we
> would have to do some kind of preprocessing of the .java files. 
> 
> The JRVM people have written their own preprocessor to handle this task
> (see rvm/src/tools/preprocessor/preprocessModifiedFiles.C). I think we
> could use the same tool.
> 
> It understands these directives:
> 
> // The following preprocessor directives are recognized in source files:
> //    //-#if    <name>
> //    //-#elif  <name>
> //    //-#else  <optional-comment>
> //    //-#endif <optional-comment>
> 
> I suppose it's also possible to use cpp, I don't know if it would choke
> on anything in the .java source.

cpp works just fine on .java source as far as I can tell.  I've seen
it used elsewhere for such things.  As the build already looks into
builddir for source (produced from srcdir via configure for instance)
then adding this shouldn't be hard, probably change the order of
compilation to look in 'lib' after going through all the .java source
directories, 'java', 'javax', and 'gnu'.  In those add the cpp rules
to Makefile.am.

> I don't think there are any other obstacles to incorporating this into
> CVS.
> 
> The JRVM code base is still under development and although there is a
> 'library' interface between Classpath and JRVM, there might still be
> maintenance work to be done to keep the two CVS trees in sync. 

There is maintenance work with every JVM... any time we change the JVM
interface we introduce that work ourselves.

> > > I'm also looking for someone to host an 'autobuilder' and perhaps run
> > > nightly regression tests (starting with mauve and maybe others).
> > 
> > I'm looking to do the same for Kissme, maybe others if they work with
> > Classpath CVS.  I'll let the list know when I've done Kissme and
> > getting the other one in there shouldn't be difficult.
> 
> Great. Do you have a machine where you can have this run every night and
> produce binaries?

I can run it on my machine for now... I don't have anything suitable
for distribution of binaries at the moment, so producing them is
somewhat useless except to perform tests and product test results.

> For JRVM an autobuilder would have to be a beefy machine. Building the
> basebase image (which is what I mostly do with the port) needs a machine
> with 512MB ram and will take roughly 5 minutes of CPU time. 

Shouldn't be a problem.  I don't use my machine when I'm sleeping.

> Building the image with the optimising compiler, (which we'll do at a
> later stage), will take a substantial amount of time and lots of RAM.

Maybe I'll get more RAM if it becomes a problem.

Brian
-- 
Brian Jones <address@hidden>