java-gnome bindings

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi all,

Since Savannah is still down and it might take some time till it comes
back up (*) I thought it was nice to mention the java-gnome effort to
get into the official Gnome binding release.

Work on the core classes and various execution environments is very
important as base for future programs based on our free frameworks. But
I think that for the GNU/Linux desktop having Gnome bindings will be the
most important task after that. And luckily we already have most of that
already (glib, gdk, gtk, gnome, pango, atk, gtkhtml, glade are all in
java-gnome).

Although the progress on the gtk AWT peers has been enormous lately,
java-gnome is still better for creating a UI around your program. See
for example my gnome frontend for snark:
http://www.klomp.org/snark/snark-gnome.html

Mark Howard has been making java-gnome packages for Debian and also
makes sure that they work with gcj. So our free environments are already
supported quite well. If you haven't tried your VM with java-gnome yet
you might want to try it! (For kaffe I did have to fix some JNI issues
in the past, so it is also a nice JNI stress tests for a VM.)

He is currently restructuring the CVS and build structure to conform to
the way the standard gnome bindings should be packaged and making sure
the build system works for (native) gcj. I believe he could use help
from people who are experienced with make and gcj/java files since the
first gnome-bindings deadline is already in 10 days.

For more information on this effort see:
http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.5/bindings/

There is also a poll and some discussion on various gnome bindings at:
http://www.gnomedesktop.org/pollBooth.php?pollID=50

And please join the mailinglist to help with the fun:
http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=1522

Cheers,

Mark

(*) Sorry still no estimate. Latest info is as always on
http://savannah.gnu.org/ which currently says:

        We are currently auditing the Savannah source code and the
        surrounding CVS tools to ensure that they have no security
        problems that can be exploited to give local user shell access. 
        Given the advent of many local-user-exploitable security
        problems, we want to verify that shell access cannot be acquired
        through any of Savannah's interfaces.
        [...]
        We appreciate the assistance and cooperation of the Free
        Software development community as we work through these
        difficulties.  We are moving slowly so that everyone will be
        assured that the replacement Savannah system is more secure than
        the previous system.

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