Very intresting and well noted writeup sir an insight from a Sun employee is always a bonus.
I will for sure followup comments on this article and see what the community has to say on this post. On 5/11/05, Gerry Steele <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm a big fan of the Apache foundation but this is one product I'm not too > sure is such a good idea as of yet for reasons several: > > >> Deprecated or non deprecated, we want Harmony to pass the TCK, so > > >> whatever the TCK wants us to do, we'll do it. > > I hope you understand what sticking to the TCK entails. When it comes to > implementing GUI stuff for instance, your platform will have to fully copy > the official JVM's Swing/AWT widgets and all other details in order for > the > automation and robot driven tests to pass. The JCK testbase for tiger is > immense. To get it setup and run is a skill on its own. To get it to pass > all tests takes a serious am mount of tweaking and a noteable knowledge of > the javatest harness. It will require implementations on things as > extensive > as CORBA and RMI. We would need passive agents, tname servers etc. > > Also, when running the TCK bear in mind that you'll have to run the > harness > with the Sun VM. > > I'm not sure about the particular extent of the testsuite provided with > the > TCK you guys are talking about (if there is interest can find out more), > but > the JCK, which is basically a TCK for the entire J2SE jre and jdk will be > going on impossible to pass for an alternative implmentation as everything > is written with the Sun JDK/JRE in mind and test cases are adapted in ways > that will create an infinite unpredictable series of problems when trying > to > adapt your code. > > Another reason is that I'm not quite sure I see the point. It will take > 4-5 > years or more to even come close to a product like tiger. Sun are already > working heavily on mustang and dolphin (to a lesser degree on the latter). > As well as this, sun research have many projects looking at the future of > the Java VM such as the Barcelona project which will drastically change > the > implementation of the JVM. For instance to make it more network orientated > or to improve resource sharing. > > The latter things (which are yet to see real sun implementation) might be > something you guys might then want to take advantage of in order to > leverage > a selling point of Harmony. Without something like that it's just another > attempt at a VM that will be playing catch-up forever. > > Also, don't forget about quality. Sun put a serious amount of money and > manpower into ensuring the quality and compatibility of the JVM. A lot of > corporations depend on this. They have a regular update release cycle. For > instance we are currently working on 1.3.1_16, 1.4.2_09, 5.0_04 & 5.0_05. > > In a project of this size some of the the test suites take several days to > run. Some take many many hours of man power. For excessive thoroughness > there also manual JCK and regression test suites. Which, trust me, will > not > be performed by someone who isn't being paid for it. Things like this > don't > fit well with the community model. > > Another worry I have is that the effort here might be better redirect to > some other project. We already have Java. Even if harmony does make it to > a > useable release people will still prefer to use the Sun VM. It will be the > platform people build on and it will be the one they trust. > > I'll be very interested in how this turns out. > > Regards, > Gerry > > 1) speed > > > > 2) portability (java is claimed to run 'everywhere', but in fact, it > > runs only on a few operating systems, even fewer for 1.5) > > > > 3) configurability (I might want to tune it differently and, for > > example, choose different thread/GC models) > > > > 4) implementation stategy (in macosx, multiple JVMs share 80% of their > > memory, and some of Swing is native, therefore feels like the rest of > > the OS and it's hardware accelerated) > > > > 5) internal modularity (we want diversity of implementation to drive > > innovation in the VM space, both in and out companies and universities) > > > > And, last but not least, if Sun or other vendors that already have JVM > > want to stop paying for all that development on their and want to start > > sharing the development costs with the java ecosystem in general and > > with a clear warranty that we will not try to pollute the stream we all > > drink from, therefore want to contribute some of their code to Harmony, > > we will welcome them with open arms. > > > > -- > > Stefano. > > > > > > -- > Gerry Steele > > x74521/+353-1-8199 521 > http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/gerrys > [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- www.FaeLLe.com <http://www.FaeLLe.com>
