Hi everyone, I'd like to start work on an implementation of the pack200 decompression algorithm, from the specification which is available at http://www.jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/first/jsr200/
The actual java class/interface is relatively simple, but the implementation behind the unpack() and pack() methods decidedly isn't :-) My goal will be to provide the unpacking algorithm first, and then work on a packer subsequently. I'll probably try to write it in an o.a.h module first, and then hook it into the java.util.jar classes/packages later. The only problem is that I'm building this on a Mac (primarily) and so I don't have the ability to download the IBM VM for bootstrapping the VM process (though a later task is to see if I can help with the migration of the VM to Mac OS X). Can I develop it against the Java 1.4 on my machine for the o.a.h module first, and then contribute it in stages? The other problem is that the API is pretty sparse; the packer either unpacks, or it doesn't :-) So from a contribution point of view, there may not be much to publically show, but I'd like (if possible) to have some of the implementation work made available as I go, in case anyone else wants to help out :-) I'd also like to try and design the implementation such that it could be downloaded and used by other OSGi implementations (e.g. Eclipse). If someone can give me some advice as to a suitable package name I can make an initial start on an implementation, and then in stages can post it to Jira. Thanks, Alex.