Re: Branch for generics

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "David" == David Holmes <address@hidden> writes:

David> So Sun's JDK 1.4 VM is not required to support 1.5 class
David> files. Of course it is up to the individual non-Sun VM's
David> whether they will be able to load such class files and simply
David> ignore the extra information that is now present.  Remember
David> that more than generics has changed the class file format.

Yeah.  As I understand it, Sun decided that their 1.5 compiler would
not be able to handle "-source 1.5 -target 1.4", since that would mean
"subsetting the language" (since, e.g., enum and foreach depend on
classes not in 1.4).  And in particular, I think 1.5 extends the ldc
opcode to allow constant classes (a very nice addition if you ask me)
-- so VMs would need at least one change.

Ultimately, of course, it is us here on this list implementing
Classpath.  I'm sure when the time comes we can competently evaluate
the merge according to our collective needs.  Probably by that time
we'll have a good idea of the minimal changes required to actually run
the resulting Classpath... I do suspect that full handling of all the
new 1.5 features (there are class file extensions for generic
signatures, enums, varargs, and attributes, at least) won't be
required.

Tom