RE: gij as JRE 5

[Andrew John Hughes]

On Sun, 2004-11-14 at 19:36, Jeroen Frijters wrote:
> Andrew Haley wrote:
> > Make 1.5 bytecode a reqiurement for the 1.0 branch.
> 
> I don't understand what you mean by this. Supporting 1.5 bytecode in the
> VM is trivial, but we don't have any 1.5 source compilers yet, do we?
> 
> I know Tom's working on gcjx, but AFAIK it isn't in a working state yet
> and personally I'd like to have a 1.5 compatible version of Jikes too
> before we move to using 1.5 language features.
> 
> Regards,
> Jeroen

It's not so much 1.5 language features as the API of 1.5.  There are, as
I see it, two categories of changes in 1.5:

* Changes which involve generics, enums and the other stuff in 1.5 (e.g.
the java.util collections).  This is stuff that a pre-1.5 compiler will
choke on, and is something that should stay in the generics branch for
now.

* Changes which are just additional classes or interfaces without the
use of 1.5 language features.  From looking at the docs, there are quite
a few of these, to say the least.  Even in java.lang, you have the
addition of StringBuilder and methods to the Math class.  These would be
more suited to addition to the HEAD branch, as there they will get wider
testing and development.

The 1.5 language features largely disappear at byte-code level, as
demonstrated by Tom's mail on adding compatibility.  At a guess, I would
say that the users of Java bytecode would outnumber those who compile
it.  Also, Java tends not to be compiled to bytecode on a per-user
basis, in the way that C code would, because the non-native form makes
this unadvantageous.  I think it would give the Free interpreters, and
the Free library that is GNU Classpath,  a better position if they can
handle bytecode from 1.5, even if Free compilers are not yet capable of
creating it.  Certainly, we will need the support in the long run, and
the more well used and widely tested it is before this, the better IMO.
-- 
Andrew :-)

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