Jikes RVM 2.3.1 released (uses classpath 0.07)

[David P Grove]

Hi,

        We
thought some people on this list might be interested in knowing that we've
released a new version of Jikes RVM that is using classpath 0.07.  If
this kind of posting is not appropriate, let me know and we won't cross
post release announcements in the future.  Appended below is the release
announcement.

--dave

Jikes RVM 2.3.1 is now available from
the developerworks web site (http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/jikesrvm/).

The release notes are appended below. 

*Sections of this document: 
 *Highlights 
 *Other Notes 
 *Bug Fixes 

*Highlights of this release include: 

**Mac OSX is now supported! 
Generously contributed by Chris Hoffman of the University of
Massachusetts (USA). 
***Details: 
If you want to build Jikes RVM for Mac OSX, you will need to patch
your copy (version 0.06 or better) of GNU Classpath with the patch
file located in aux/gnu-classpath-on-mac-osx.patch.

** Seven user contributions incorporated since 2.3.0
*** Contributions were improvements to JMTk from Robin Garner,
port to OSX from Chris Hoffman, refCount coalescing extension from Ian
Warrington, bug fixes for the OSX port and opt compiler on PPC from
Alan Lawrence, implementation of -jar cmd line arg from Anders Biehl
Norgaard, and support for getting the classpath from CLASSPATH envar
from Philippe Faes. 

** Switched to classpath 0.07 
*** Classpath 0.06 is expected to also work with this release of Jikes
RVM, 
but we recommend upgrading to the latest classpath release.

**Build system improvements: 
***If you run "jbuild" with --trace, 
you actually get all of the relevant shell commands printed out.

***Under jbuild --trace=make, whenever we change directories, we report
it 
This is parseable by Emacs's compilation-mode.  --trace=make is
enabled automatically by "--trace" without any arguments.

***More error-checking functionality added to the build system.

***Cleaned up a couple of bogus warnings 
one could get in some versions of the Bourne-Again Shell (Bash).

***We can make automatic binary installations of Jikes RVM
There's a new generated script, "$RVM_BUILD/jbuild.install",
that does 
this.  Handy way to save off a configuration that works before making
changes.  Also lets us make a binary distribution of Jikes RVM, should
it be desirable. 

***New build options, JAVAC_WARNING_FLAGS and JIKES_WARNING_FLAGS
These variables replace the former hardcoded "-nowarn", and can
be set 
arbitrarily. They default to "-nowarn" for historical compatibility.
It means you can now get helpful warnings from the Java compiler.

**Improvements to automatic download of GNU Classpath libraries.
***We now use wget to download a classpath release instead of doing a
cvs checkout.  This avoids the problematic aclocal/autoconf/etc step
and means that automatic downloading should work for all users and is
now the recommended default. 

**Progress in PowerPC64 port: we can run hello world
***The Jikes RVM port to PPC64 has progressed to the point where a prototype
configuration boots and can run many simple programs.
Getting this far requires that lots of things are working, so it is a
fairly significant step.  However, there is more work to do with
prototype and we haven't started work on the opt compiler. This is very
much a work in progress (and members of the community are encouraged
to help!). 

*Other notes: 

***We have fixed all C and C++ compiler warnings in the Linux/x86 source
code, under GCC 2.96, GCC 3.3, and GCC 3.3.1.  The only exception
is 
warnings from GCC 2.96 of the form: 

        ihnpdsm.C:4942: warning: `unused' attribute
ignored 

They are benign; ignore them. 

***__linuxsmp__ has now been officially exorcised from the source.

*Bug Fixes: 

***Debugging output no longer can drift into InterfaceDeclarations.h;
GenerateInterfaceDeclarations.java takes a new "-out" option.

***--trace=preprocessor now lists all of the directories consistently.

***Cross-building from Linux to AIX now works better.
You can now set RVM_ROOT and RVM_BUILD to different values on the host
and the target machines. 
****Details: 
If you don't have RVM_ROOT and/or RVM_BUILD set in your environment
when you run the booter on the target, then "jbuild -booter"
will use 
the (recorded) values from the host.  If you do have one or both of
them set, they'll be used as appropriate. 

It is now the case that, when you run "jconfigure" and "jbuild",
you 
should have your PATH set so that there is some Bash version in it
somewhere under the name "bash". 

*** Other misc bugs fixed as well; see the bug tracking software.