Re: JDK 1.5 support?

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew John Hughes <address@hidden> writes:

Andrew> I would certainly be interested in contributing to a branch
Andrew> working on 1.5 support, as I would also gain some exposure to
Andrew> it then as well.

Let's make a 1.5 branch and see what happens.  Mark, what do you
think?  Worst case is that nobody does anything there.

Andrew> Some stuff, as already mentioned,
Andrew> could go straight into the main branch.  The StringBuilder class (a
Andrew> non-thread-safe version of StringBuffer) and a few other bits are
Andrew> obvious candidates

Yes, I would say the rule should be "if jikes and gcj can compile it,
it can go on the main branch".

Andrew> The hardest thing would seem to be the generics (Java's
Andrew> templates -- is it or me or does it seem strange that Java
Andrew> 1.5/5.0 is basically bringing back in lots of C++ features,
Andrew> mainly as a result of C# having them?).

I think there's no question that Java is being strongly influenced by
C#.

Don't confuse Java's generics with C++ templates though.  They are
superficially similar (have a vaguely similar goal and syntax), but
generics are much, much simpler and work in a fundamentally different
way.

Andrew> Generics are added to a lot of the core classes, notably java.util's
Andrew> collections.  Would adding this mean that compilers and code would need
Andrew> to be 1.5 ready?

Yes, the compilers will need a lot of work.  The runtimes will also
need some work, as there is new reflection data to keep around.

Tom