Re: [swarm-hackers] what does native_threads do in Swarm Java?

[Marcus G. Daniels]

The Java autoconfiguration stuff dates back to before there was any free 
JVM other than Kaffe/japhar.

Virtually *all* of the logic in acjdk.m4 is obsolete and no longer 
useful.   The threads stuff was just to enumerate the shared libraries 
that java would need so that it wouldn't be necessary for one wrapper 
script (javaswarm) to call another (kaffe), spawning lots of shells and 
being slow.

Specifically, there is no reference to threads at all in Swarm.

Choices are to 1) hack the acjdk.m4 along the lines of the code now for 
new versions, or 2) decide to strip down the number of AC_SUBST 
substitutions used in the Swarm Java makefiles and scripts.   Maybe look 
around at new autoconf macro packages intended for Java and rework from 
there.   2 is clearly the better thing to do.

In retrospect, I think the javaswarm/javacswarm scripts were a mistake 
to introduce.   Now people end up wanting to use Swarm in Eclipse or 
similar and end up having to bypass the scripts anyway.  At the end of 
the day the idea is simple:  provide a shared library and a .jar file, 
and other packages do that too.

Marcus