Towards GNU Classpath 0.07 and 1.0

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi all,

Wanted to share my thoughts on the next snapshot 0.07 and what should be
done before we can really start thinking about GNU Classpath 1.0. These
are just suggestions so please yell and scream (politely) if you have
other ideas about this.

0.07. The best thing for the next snapshot is to just set a date when we
want to release it. I propose to just set this at the last week of
November (three months from now) since we are already making real
progress. Look at the bug/patch database for a number of improvements to
object streams, java.text, rmi and javax.naming that are just waiting to
get checked in. Much thanks go to the Kaffe team that has been importing
Classpath libraries like mad the last couple of weeks and simultaneously
debugged them and provided patches! And apologies to anyone whose
patches didn't make it for the 0.06 release.
If that works out then we can just keep on doing snapshot releases every
three months till...

1.0. This is the release everybody is really waiting for. It should give
people enough functionality to be useful for creating real projects
(from full featured JDKs that people create on top of GNU Classpath) and
it should be polished enough that we feel it is worth to maintain it
(while we start working towards 2.0). We cannot set a date for it, but
we can list the requirements that should be met to make it happen:

- At least the same functionality as other 1.1 JDK core classes provide.
  (We have most of the packages needed to provide, but debugging to get
   them all working correctly will take some time. The main missing part
   has always been the AWT (peers) but the gcj hackers are really
   working hard on them. The wonka visual test tool that Thomas recently
   imported into Mauve will certainly help with this effort. Since we
   clearly have already so much more then plain 1.1 we might set the
   goal a bit higher to include everything that people expect from 1.1
   plus the extensions described in the java class libraries second
   edition, volume 1 supplemental. Plus of course everything from 1.3
   and 1.4 that we can clearly show is ready. But getting a minimum 1.1
   set of packages all at the same minimum level should be the first
   goal.)

- Clean and stable VM interface that makes implementing a VM and/or
  compiler based on GNU Classpath easy.
  (We have a start with the various VM[ClassName] classes inside the
   vm/reference directory. We should extend these with the proposals for
   e.g. VMThread and VMSecurityManager that were already proposed on the
   list and they should be better documented in the vmintegration guide.
   Ideally even gcj and kaffe would use this VM interface, but the main
   target are the free VMs that realy exclusively on GNU Classpath as
   core library implementation.)

- Up to date documentation that at a minimum provides a reference like
  overview of what we have and what each class/method does. And clearly
  describes what is work in progress/non-functional stubs.
  (gjdoc really helps here. And our api doc isn't that bad. We really
   need to write some package.html overview pages for the packages that
   we feel agree really useful though. We also might need to hack a bit
   on gjdoc to make do everything we want - like including pictures.)

- Testsuite that can be used to see if the libraries work as expected
  and that we can use to spot regressions while we work on future
  versions.
  (We use Mauve for that and it is already pretty good to show
   regressions on parts of our library, but it needs a bit of cleaning
   up to make it more generally useful. Also some packages don't have
   any tests at all.)

We aren't that far from 1.0. But polishing everything up and the general
rule about "the last 10% takes the other 90% of time" do apply.
Hopefully we can come up with a useful task list for 1.0 (we already
have a task list on savannah, but I don't if people really use that).

But above all, keep having fun, keep on hacking!

Cheers,

Mark

P.S. Speaking about the future of software.

Please take the time to read the following important information about
patents in Europe: http://swpat.ffii.org/

If you live in Europe and can make time, please join the protest in
Brussels next Wednesday (Aug 27 2003):
    http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/demo0819/index.en.html
If you cannot make it, please join the online demonstration:
    http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html
And/Or try to help in other ways:
    http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/index.en.html

Hope to see some of you in Brussels on Wednesday!
Help with lodging and traveling in groups is coordinated at:
http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/BigDemo27aug
And the #bxl-ffii channel on irc.freenode.org