Re: JDK 1.5 support?

[Andrew John Hughes]

On Wed, 2004-06-30 at 17:30, Tom Tromey wrote:
> >>>>> "Michael" == Michael Koch <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> Michael> Currently only SUNs javac fully supports generics.
> 
> BTW, I've heard that there is a branch of the Eclipse java compiler
> that supports generics and the other 1.5 stuff.  I haven't tried it
> yet, though.  I looked at Eclipse cvs, though, and didn't immediately
> find it :-(
> 
> Michael> We thought about doing it on a separate CVS branch of
> Michael> classpath.
> 
> If someone wanted to start this project, a branch would definitely be
> the way to go.  Then when we have the compilers ready, we can merge it
> in.
> 
> Tom
> 
> 
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Sounds like this is the way to go.  It would be interesting if the Free
Java stuff was in sync with the new 1.5 stuff, even though we don't even
have all the earlier stuff done.  The main thing there seems to be
Swing, which doesn't effect server-side Java, so adding 1.5 support for
the other stuff like the new language features and some of the other
stuff seems a good idea.  Looking through, there are quite a few
additions to the packages.  I would certainly be interested in
contributing to a branch working on 1.5 support, as I would also gain
some exposure to it then as well.  Some stuff, as already mentioned,
could go straight into the main branch.  The StringBuilder class (a
non-thread-safe version of StringBuffer) and a few other bits are
obvious candidates (I'd say the additional javax.imageio plugin, but we
don't even have javax.imageio yet).
The hardest thing would seem to be the generics (Java's templates -- is
it or me or does it seem strange that Java 1.5/5.0 is basically bringing
back in lots of C++ features, mainly as a result of C# having them?). 
Generics are added to a lot of the core classes, notably java.util's
collections.  Would adding this mean that compilers and code would need
to be 1.5 ready?  I don't know how backwards-compatible this stuff is. 
Sun don't have as much of a problem, as their compiler and class library
are tied together, while GNU Classpath is shared by quite a few VMs in
different situations.
-- 
Andrew :-)
 
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