On 6/7/05, Archie Cobbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: [..] > > Because it's possible that Sun finds this aspect of Harmony valuable > > overall, and contributes information to help shape this. > > I highly doubt that will happen (just my opinion though). > > >> Secondly, you can no longer use Classpath as is, so Harmony will have > >> to create a new fork of the Classpath code. Lots of work, zero forward > >> progress. > > > > No, we won't fork GNU Classpath. I don't understand why you believe we > > have to do this. > > Well, the alternative is to convince the Classpath developers to completely > rewrite the existing API to match whatever Sun currently does (which is > unknown, and would probably taint them), and also convince all the current > VM implementers to change their implementations. As a Classpath developer > and VM implementer, I even more highly doubt that. > > >> Thirdly, what's to stop Sun from changing things around every release? > >> Their API is not standardized in any way. It involves "sun.*" > >> classes, etc. > > > > Nothing. > > So you have a moving, undocumented API to support. Sounds fun :-) [..]
>From what i understood from the GNU Classpath VM Integration Guide, a classlibrary-VM interface is intended to provide implementation for some basic classes that are needed by this particular classlibrary to get the work done, correct me anybody, please? (are there any other requirements for such interface beyond some hooks? (maybe true for Sun rt.jar)) Jikes RVM, Kaffe, SableVM, etc ----[implement Classpath-required classes]----> can use Classpath Harmony VM ----[implement Classpath-required classes]----> can use Classpath Harmony VM ----[implement Sun rt.jar-required classes(??)] ---> can use Sun rt.jar Harmony VM ----[implement X-required classes]----> can use X maybe Harmony would: 1. determine which classes are required by each classlibrary implementation: GNU, Sun (is this legal), are there any others? btw, how will we know about Sun's? is src.zip enough ? (i doubt there are any published docs about this) 2. work out a draft spec about what it takes for a common, well there was only GUN and Sun, classlibrary-VM interface based on what we found in Classpath and rt.jar 2. implement adpaters for Classpath and rt.jar (what i mean is that Harmony spec will introduce a layer to abstract current classlibrary-vm interfaces) Apache can take this spec to the JCP and till it's approved the adapaters will be enough (if sun changed the interface in the next version we would work on a new adapeter. maybe there would be some changes in the spec). i haven't been down to a VM before but can such a thing be achived? -ahmed
