Re: Classpath build process and VM-specific issues

[Etienne Gagnon]

Archie Cobbs wrote:
> > Eeeh.  I can't imagine that either.  If there's a strong argument for
> > holding native pointer in a byte[] ?
> Object is good because it is automatically the size of a pointer
> on any platform. However, it has one significant disadvantage, which
> is that you must special case all such fields in your garbage collector
> (unless you have a conservative collector). byte[] avoids this problem.

OK.  It seems people are missing an important point: This is "polymorphic"
Java code.  If you declare:

  Object vmData;

You can later write:

  vmData = new byte[PTR_SIZE];

or

  vmData = new RawData();

or whatever.

So what's the problem, with this?

Etienne

--
Etienne M. Gagnon, Ph.D.             http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
SableVM:                                       http://www.sablevm.org/
SableCC:                                       http://www.sablecc.org/