Re: 0.05

[Etienne M. Gagnon]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 04:36:24PM -0500, Brian Jones wrote:
> I think our release criteria should be:
> 
> * Work with Kissme and JRVM, SableVM, and ORP if possible from the release.

I think this would be a great idea.  Now, I haven't had much time this
Fall to work on getting Classpath's CVS to directly work with
SabvleVM, but it is pretty high on my todo list for January.

I think of proposing a relatively clean organization of Classpath's
sources so that:

1- It compiles to all the above targets (Kissme, JRVM, SableVM, ORP)
and other ones (GCJ, Jupiter, ...) directly, amd

2- it minimizes the differences in source files between VMs.

Maybe using a macro processor like GNU m4 (we could also provide easy
to use macros so that most programmers would not have to learn m4)
could help at managing VM specific differences in key source files.

Keeping the various implementations of key methods, in Java source
files, could help maintainers to see the potential impact of their
changes on other VMs than the one being worked on.

I'll try to come up with a proposal, but I will not start working
seriously on this before the second week of January.

Of course, we could hack up the build of 0.5 to simply work for
SableVM using the current organization, and implement the new ideas,
if they are accepted, in 0.6.

Have fun!

Etienne
-- 
Etienne M. Gagnon                    http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
SableVM:                                       http://www.sablevm.org/
SableCC:                                       http://www.sablecc.org/