Jikes RVM version 2.3.5 is now available
for download from sourceforge.net at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jikesrvm/jikesrvm-2.3.5.tar.gz?download.
The Release Notes are appended below.
*Jikes RVM 2.3.5 Release Notes (released on April
8, 2005)
*Highlights
** This release of Jikes RVM does not work on OSX.
If you use Jikes RVM on OSX please help us fix it so subsequent
releases will support OSX again.
**The recommended version of GNU classpath for this release of Jikes RVM
is 0.14.
Furthermore, all of the configuration logic that controls classpath
version has been moved to $RVM_ROOT/rvm/config/classpath-version. We
suggest you may want to modify your local configuration files to source
this file, to make it easier to track changes in classpath version
across releases of Jikes RVM.
**We can build with Jikes versions 1.20, 1.21, 1.22, and CVS Head.
**We detect the version of the Jikes compiler in use and print warning
messages if that version has not been tested.
**Quick Compiler (missing from the original 2.3.4 release notes)
Release 2.3.4 marked the first public appearance
of the "Quick" compiler for the PowerPC architecture targets.
The Quick compiler is supposed to be rather smarter than the Base
compiler about register use without being nearly as complex as the Opt
compiler.
Rather smarter means that stack and local variables are kept in
registers if possible, not in memory.
Not nearly as complex means, for instance, that the Quick compiler code
generator works in a single pass, with no intermediate representations.
Right now the only additional optimizations are to remember if stack or
local variable values are already in a temporary or work register and
hence don't need to be loaded, and to postpone local variable stores
until it becomes obvious that the value really needs to be written.
One purpose of the Quick compiler is to explore how close to the
performance of the Opt compiler we can come by using just the most
beneficial optimizations. Also, we hope to use it as a starting point
for experimenting with other optimizations without having to deal with
the implementation details of the Opt compiler and the complex
interactions among the many optimizations performed by the Opt compiler.
*Other Notes:
**We've moved to http://jikesrvm.sourceforge.net.
We'll try to update the documentation, but please point out anything
that we missed.
**The release notes are now in a file called NEWS instead of
the old ReleaseNotes-<revision-number> files. Further, NEWS
is an
archive; it is contains release notes for all open source versions of
Jikes RVM.
**The java.version system property is now at 1.4.2
(This is missing from the original 2.3.4 release notes)
Claiming to be at java.version 1.4.2 is a lie, of course -- we don't
really support all 1.4 features, such as assertions. However, it
is a
necessary lie, since Eclipse 3.0 explicitly tests java.version and
insists upon at least 1.4.1 to run.
Similarly, java.specification.version is up to 1.4 and
java.vm.version is at 1.4.2.
*Bug Fixes:
**The problems with timezones that several users have reported with the
change to daylight savings times and Jikes RVM 2.3.4/classpath 0.12 are
not a problem in Jikes RVM 2.3.5/classpath 0.14.
**Calling VM.sysFail during boot image writing no longer generates a bogus
"vm internal error" message.
***VM_Scheduler.traceback and VM_Scheduler.dumpStack now work properly
even when Jikes RVM is writing the boot image. This, in turn, means
that we no longer generate internal errors if we have to call
VM.sysFail during boot image writing time.