SableVM 1.1.7 released

[Grzegorz B. Prokopski]

The developers of the SableVM Project are proud to announce the
official release of SableVM 1.1.7.  SableVM is a liberally licensed
Free Java virtual machine.  See the "About SableVM" section below for
more informations about SableVM.

Here is a list of the most important changes and new features.  In
this version, we:

- Imported new GNU Classpath CVS snapshot as of Sun Oct 10 18:00:00
  UTC 2004.
- Added handling of Jar/Zip files on boot classpath (closes BUG:2).
- Provided user-friendly failure messages for bootstrap problems.  This
  should get rid of the hated "sablevm: cannot create vm".
- Allowed for multiple elements and prepending/appending to boot class
  path.
- Added --with-profiling switch to make most functions non-"static".
- Made sablevm-classpath install its files in more standard locations.
- Explicitely disallowed compilation of classpath with gcj or kjc (it
  never worked reliably).
- Made jikes and gcc be less verbose by default (to avoid confusion).
- Removed some obsolete code from various places.
- Added new Generational Garbage Collector ("experimental", available on
  request, by passing --with-gc=gencopy to configure).
- Made several bugfixes of:
  - JNI methods not returning NULL on errors (closes BUG:12).
  - IsInstanceOf always returning JNI_FALSE (closes BUG:63).
  - A copy&paste mistake in PopLocalFrame (closes BUG:62).
  - Several JNI methods not returning NULL on errors (closes BUG:12).
  - IsInstanceOf always returning JNI_FALSE (closes BUG:63).
  - "New array" memory allocation size overflow (closes BUG:8).
  - Out-of-source builds (closes BUG:55).
  - Handling of 'double' values on ARM.
  - FPU in 64-bit precision mode on Linux / Intel x86 (closes BUG:1).
  - F2L, F2I, D2L, D2I not checking for overflows (closes BUG:54).
  - SIGPIPE killing the VM (closes BUG:51).
  - GNU make detection on non-GNU/Linux platforms.
  - Case-insensitive grepping for "Main-Class:" string in MANIFEST.MF.


=== ABOUT SABLEVM ===

SableVM is a robust, extremely portable, efficient, and
specifications-compliant Java Virtual Machine that aims to be easy to
maintain and to extend.  It features a state-of-the-art and efficient
interpreter engine.  Its source code is very accessible and easy to
understand.  It also has many robustness features that have been the
object of careful design.

SableVM is a clean-room implementation of the publicly available
specifications.

SableVM is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License (LGPL).  It also uses a modified version of GNU Classpath
called sablevm-classpath which is licensed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL) with a linking exception.

The license of SableVM (LGPL) was specifically chosen as to maximize
your ability to legally link and run popular applications, such as
Eclipse (http://eclipse.org) and Ant (http://ant.apache.org), which
are licensed in ways which might conflict with the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL).  See the the following link for more
information:

  http://sablevm.org/wiki/License_FAQ

The SableVM web site is located at:

  http://sablevm.org


=== INSTALLATION ===

SableVM is available to download from the following locations:

- http://sablevm.org/download/release/
- http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5523 (Soon!)

You must download both:

- sablevm-1.1.7.tar.gz
- sablevm-classpath-1.1.7.tar.gz.

See the INSTALL file included in the sablevm-1.1.7.tar.gz archive for
build environment requirements and installation procedures.

We make frequent releases, but we also provide daily snapshots of our
"staging" development branch at:

  http://sablevm.org/download/snapshot/

Note that the code of the staging branch is more robust than the code
usually found in the CVS trunk of many other free software projects.
The staging branch only contains code that has been first tested by
developers within their own sandbox.  A detailed explanation of the
different development branches is available at:

  http://sablevm.org/wiki/Development_Branches


=== NOTES ===

We appreciate your feedback.  Please feel invited to contact us.  See:

  http://sablevm.org/support.html

You can also join us in real-time on the #sablevm IRC channel on
irc.sablevm.org (alias: irc.freenode.net, irc.debian.org).


=== BINARY PACKAGES ===

Binary packages of new SableVM versions are usually available in the
GNU/Linux Debian "unstable" distribution shortly after the official
release.  These packages normally migrate to the "testing"
distribution a few weeks later.

Some other GNU/Linux distributions (Gentoo, etc.) and other operating
systems (*BSD, etc.) also provide binary packages or a convenient
build environment to compile and install sablevm.


=== Additional Information ===

You will find a wealth of additional information in SableVM's wiki
pages at:

  http://sablevm.org/wiki/



=== CONCLUSION ===

We wish you great fun using SableVM.

Enjoy!


        The SableVM Project developers

-- 
Grzegorz B. Prokopski      <address@hidden>  <address@hidden>
Debian GNU/Linux           http://www.debian.org
SableVM - LGPL'ed Java VM  http://www.sablevm.org
Why SableVM ?!?            http://sablevm.org/wiki/Features