Sun has recently shown willingness to introduce features -- even very major ones -- into its JVM that are not necessarily supported by other JVM vendors since they are not part of the Java 7 specification. The specific feature I'm thinking of here is Jigsaw.
I can't comment as to whether Sun actually plans to implement tail calls in it's JDK 7 or not. I personally would be a lot more comfortable relying on TCO if it were part of the specification... remember that the Sun JVM may be the de facto standard on Windows and Linux but not necessarily on Macs, mobile devices and large enterprise servers and mainframes. Of course, for this feature to appear in the Java 7 specification, that specification has to actually exist. Right now it looks like it won't until after Sun's JDK 7 is released -- assuming Sun isn't acquired in the meantime, in which case most bets are off. Regards Neil. On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Jon Harrop <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thursday 02 April 2009 15:09:12 Charles Oliver Nutter wrote: >> It's not necessarily Sun's choice when it exhibits external behavioral >> changes. Such changes must be standardized so all JVMs will support >> them. If it were just up to Sun, it would probably go in (since I know I >> want it and several others want it). > > Ok. I only care about Sun's JVM because it is the defacto standard. If tail > calls are not adopted as a standard across all JVMs, what are the odds of Sun > including them just in its own JVM as an extension? > >> My question back at you is this: what's your motive for posting this >> question? > > I want to make sure I've got my facts straight, both in order to make an > informed decision myself and to inform others accurately. Specifically, I am > considering diversifying into Scala and/or Clojure and I need to know whether > or not the elimination of tail calls may become reliable in those languages > in the relatively-near future. If not, that is a serious impediment for > functional languages and will rule out all JVM-based languages for me. > >> And of course you can certainly build OpenJDK + MLVM with tail calls to >> try it yourself. > > The problem is not my building and installing a custom JDK and testing it to > make sure that it is reliable myself. The problem is that requiring customers > to do that is such a substantial barrier to adoption that it would seriously > undermine commercial viability. Suffice to say, *not* having to do that has > always been one of the strongest selling points of the JVM. > > -- > Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. > http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JVM Languages" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jvm-languages?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
