GNU Classpath AWT sort-of runs on Jikes RVM

[Julian Dolby]

  I have been playing with running AWT programs on Jikes RVM using GNU
Classpath, and I have have made some simple applications run.  The major
issue was the threading model, and the assumption that Java threads look
like pthreads, which they do not on Jikes RVM (we use our own user-level
threading).  I found the gthread-jni files, and I basically filled in all
the functions in gthread-jni.c to use JNI to talk to Java-level
synchronization mechanisms.  I also passed the magic structure of those
function pointers to g_thread_init in GtkMainThread.gtkInit.  This code
should work for any VM; nonethelessI put the changes to use this stuff
under a --enable-portable-native-sync option to configure, so that VMs that
do not support all the JNI I used will not be bitten by it.

  I have got my manager's permission to submit this as a contribution to
GNU Classpath, and I shall do that in the next few days.

      -- Julian