Re: JamaicaVM and GNU Classpath

[Brian Jones]

Andy Walter <address@hidden> writes:

> I don't know about NSPR and APR, but a library is not exactly what
> we wanted to use (because of code size and performance
> matters). What we currently have is a general set of macros for
> socket and file i/o access (and other evil functions such as
> malloc. Having a garbage collector that avoids or copes with memory
> fragmentation is close to being useless if the native code makes use
> of malloc that causes memory fragmentation for the memory outside of
> GC control). Each macro may or may not be defined in
> platform-dependent include files. If a macro was not implemented
> there, the generic one for POSIX systems is used.

Hey, I guess this answers that nagging question I had about how a JVM
is supposed to deal with native code memory allocation being somewhat
outside of the garbage collector arrangement in use...

In general I hate macros because I'm not one with the C compiler in
having it create the real source from a given input with macros,
etc. expanded.  However you seem to have proved out some system of
macros that works for a lot of strange environments and that is
encouraging.

> Since some of our target systems don't even provide a file system, not to 
> speak about networking, we can entirely omit those functions in that case. 

Thanks for helping us keep some perspective.  It's easy to forget or
casually ignore these systems sometimes when it isn't what you're
directly concerned with or working on.

-- 
Brian Jones <address@hidden>