We are proud to announce the release of GNU Classpath 0.93 "Dreamland"
Read on for highlights of new features in this release, pointers to supported applications and screenshots, the status and future of the 1.4 and 1.5 generics branches. An update on the Summer of Code student work. Plus some prelimenary ideas on cooperating with the Sun GPL OpenJDK Java project. And the GNU Classpath commitments to the Free Software community for the future of various projects around GNU Classpath, the users and GNU/Linux distros relying on our work. Highlights of new features in this release (more extensive list below): NIO Selector epoll (linux 2.6 kernel) and kio (BSD and Darwin) notification mechanisms added. Fast, direct call, support for in runtime CORBA objects. Support for user JNDI context factories (plus corbaname: and rmi: jndi urls). New javah tool included. JSSE SSLEngine support including TLSv1.1 and pre-shared key ciphersuites. Full lang.management MX Beans ManagementFactory implementation. 99.95% api coverage for 1.4, 95.5% api coverage for 1.5. Much better swing HTML support (aka JGecko). Graphics2D on cairo speedups and make it respects interpolation hints, better gradient support and custom Composites and Paints. Screenshots of applications (eclipse, jedit, jfreechart, "jgecko", statcvs.png) working out of the box with GNU Classpath 0.93 can be found at http://developer.classpath.org/screenshots/ With this release our 1.4 library work is 99.95 API complete. Although this doesn't mean GNU Classpath is fully compatible and a perfect drop in replacement for proprietary 1.4 JDKs yet, it is pretty close and any divergence should be considered a bug. Our 1.5 library work is now 95.5% API complete. This is the last release that will have two separate library releases for 1.4 and 1.5. The next release will be based on our 1.5 generics branch work. We are willing to maintain a 1.4 branch based the non-generic 0.93 release if people are interested in support for this. Please contact the mailinglist classpath@gnu.org if you are. This release contains two large contributions sponsored by the Google Summer of Code project. Casey Marshall rewrote the SSL library to use the NIO model of JSSE (implementing SSLEngine) and added support for TLSv1.1 and pre-shared key ciphersuites. Originally developed on the ssl-nio-branch this work is now available in the generics release. Andrew John Hughes wrote a lang.management MX Beans ManagementFactory implementation, which allows a runtime based on GNU Classpath to provide various MX Beans through javax.management services that a user can use to query the status and usage of various low level vm resources. The the original implementation was written for GCJ, but for this release other runtimes (e.g. jamvm and cacao) have added support based on the generic vm-interface designed by Andrew. GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools for the java programming language. The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development platforms. For example the GCC (gcj) and Kaffe projects will use the developer snapshots as a base for future versions. More projects based on GNU Classpath: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/stories.html On November 13 (now known as Java Liberation Day) Sun decided to start releasing all its Java ME, SE and EE implementations under the GPL. http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/ For the last decade the GNU Classpath community has worked together with various other free software projects to help people avoid the so called "Java Trap" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html As the FSF press release welcoming the Sun announcement said: 'Now, Sun has begun disarming the "Java Trap", turning it from a pitfall into a valuable foundation for future free software development.' http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-welcomes-gpl-java.html The new project 'OpenJDK' started by Sun will provide a full SE Java environment. Only parts have been released now. And the GNU Classpath community already started adopting independent parts to make them work on a full free stack. With the 0.93 generics release you should be able to compile and run the GPl javac compiler with some tricks. http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/index.php?p=172 We hope to cooperate more substantially with the OpenJDK community in the future. Not all code has been released by Sun, in particular the core class libraries will not be release till somewhere next year. And some parts might be encumbered preventing Sun from releasing those parts. We will try and help plugg any holes left. It is too early to claim we already know how our communities will interact and work together. But the general feeling is positive. Sun has been very open, clear and cooperative about OpenJDK and letting the GNU Classpath community know about their plans and willingness to work with the existing free software communities. The GNU Classpath community is happy with this development and although it is too early to see what the future might bring we know we have the following commitments to our developers, users, projects and GNU/Linux distros depending on our work: - We will not regress on freedom. For anything Sun cannot release (now) under the GPL we will provide free replacements. - We will not regress on coverage. The platforms, architectures, projects and programs that run now with GNU Classpath should run in the future. - We will not regress on having fun, innovating and hacking together! We want to make it easy to adopt and collaborate. We want to make it easy for people to improve together with GNU Classpath and OpenJDK by helping also the smaller projects and platforms with less resources to adopt the new innovation (coordinating new VM and Platform interfaces) Various individual GNU Classpath hackers have made personal statements about all this (from Planet Classpath - http://planet.classpath.org/): - Mario Torre Watch out, we have changed history... http://jroller.com/page/neugens?entry=watch_out_we_have_changed - Roman Kennke First Rays of a New Rising Sun http://kennke.org/blog/?p=25 - Brian Jones Nov. 13 2006, is a notable bookmark in the history of free software http://cbj.livejournal.com/234857.html - David Gilbert On Walled Gardens http://jroller.com/page/dgilbert?entry=on_walled_gardens - Anthony Green Now that's what I call harmony... http://spindazzle.org/greenblog/index.php?/archives/43-Now-thats-what-I-call-harmony....html - Casey Marshall Free Java! http://metastatic.org/text/Concern/2006/11/13/107/ - Andrew Hughes Victory! Pigs Fly as Java is GPLed and javac compiles Freely http://blog.fuseyism.com/?p=18 - Dalibor Topic San i java http://robilad.livejournal.com/2056.html - Jeroen Frijters Sun Open Sourcing Java http://weblog.ikvm.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=3620697a-52f4-4067-9afa-863b3066317b - Andrew Overholt Sun commits to "GPL + Exception"ing Their Java Implementation http://overholt.ca/wp/?p=74 - Thomas Fitzsimmons The New Free Java Project http://fitzsim.org/blog/?p=13 - Mark Wielaard Collaborate http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/index.php?p=171 GNU Classpath, Sun, Java, GPL, Reflections & The Future http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/index.php?p=175 - Tom Tromey Sun Frees Java http://tromey.com/blog/?p=293 The GNU Classpath developers site http://developer.classpath.org/ provides detailed information on how to start with helping the GNU Classpath project and gives an overview of the core class library packages currently provided. For each snapshot release generated documentation is provided through the GNU Classpath Tools gjdoc project. A documentation generation framework for java source files used by the GNU project. Full documentation on the currently implementated packages and classes can be found at: http://developer.classpath.org/doc/ For more information about the project see also: - GNU Classpath home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/ - Developer information (wiki): http://developer.classpath.org/ - Full class documentation http://developer.classpath.org/doc/ - GNU Classpath hackers: http://planet.classpath.org/ - Autobuilder, current build status, build snapshots: http://builder.classpath.org/ - Application test pages (wiki) http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/Applets http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeAWTTestApps http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSwingTestApps http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSWTTestApps - GNU Classpath hacking with Eclipse (wiki) http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathHackingWithEclipse - GNU Classpath promotion banners: http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathBanners GNU Classpath 0.93 can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/classpath/ or one of the ftp.gnu.org mirrors http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html File: classpath-0.93.tar.gz MD5sum: ffa9e9cac31c5acbf0ea9eff9efa923d SHA1sum: 336cae589ec91a4fe212c2149c57b51dab2ca002 File: classpath-0.93-generics.tar.gz MD5sum: 9d3f5941b9fc0d8bc056344cb07a5c86 SHA1sum: 4362433a4bd985baf00a00586c355939905861ff New in release 0.93 (Dec 8, 2006) (See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.) * CORBA objects that exist on the same virtual machine and only are connected to another ORB are now accessed directly and no longer via network. It is the same feature that RMI implementation provides. These faster calls should be completely transparent, as the parameters are cloned, where required. Currently the direct calls are only possible for the non-deprecated objects that are connected to the ORB via POA. * The 'javah' tool has been added. It requires the ASM library (see asm.objectweb.org); it can be enabled with the --with-asm option to configure * Added the rmi and corbaname URL context factories for JNDI. * Fixes in the JNDI InitialContext now allows to plug-in user implementations. * Removed currentClassLoader method from vm/reference/java/io/ObjectInputStream.java. * Added firstNonNullClassLoader method to vm/reference/gnu/classpath/VMStackWalker.java. VMs are encouraged to provide a more efficient implementation. * Added aton method to vm/reference/java/net/VMInetAddress.java. * NetworkInterface has been implemented for systems that provide the `getifaddrs' function. * java.nio.channels.Selector implementations have been added that use the kqueue notification mechanism on Mac OS X and *BSD, and that use the epoll notification mechanism on Linux 2.6. * java.nio has been refactored to support more non-blocking operations natively. Blocking IO classes have been refactored to call non-blocking classes. Non-blocking accepts, connects, and scatter-gather IO should now be better supported. * HTML support for Swing has been greatly enhanced. Runtime interface changes: * java.net.VMNetworkInterface and java.net.NetworkInterface have been updated to keep native-modified state in the former, and to simplify the native code in our reference implementation. * gnu.java.nio.VMChannel has been expanded to better support native non-blocking IO. Most native state data (such as file descriptor integers) has been abstracted away into private state in the runtime interface. * gnu.java.nio.VMPipe has been similarly changed. * gnu.java.net.VMPlainSocketImpl has been changed to remove some functionality now provided by VMChannel; datagram socket-specific methods have also been moved here, deprecating VMPlainDatagramSocketImpl. * gnu.java.net.VMPlainDatagramSocketImpl removed. The following people helped with this release: Aaron M. Ucko, Andreas Tobler, Andrew John Hughes, Audrius Meskauskas, Ben Konrath, Cameron McCormack, Casey Marshall, Chris Burdess, Christian Elias Naur, Christian Thalinger, Dalibor Topic, David Daney, David Fu, David Gilbert, David Pirkle, Edwin Steiner, Francis Kung, Friedjof Siebert, Gary Benson, Guilhem Lavaux, Helmer Kraemer, Ian Rogers, Ingo Proetel, Ito Kazumitsu, Jeroen Frijters, Keith Seitz, Lillian Angel, Marco Trudel, Mario Torre, Mark Wielaard, Martin Platter, Matthew Burgess, Michael Franz, Michael Koch, Paul Jenner, Raif S. Naffah, Riccardo Mottola, Robert Lougher, Robert Schuster, Roger Sayle, Roman Kennke, Sven de Marothy, Tania Bento, Thomas Fitzsimmons and Tom Tromey We would also like to thank the numerous bug reporters and testers!
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