Re: patch for 0.09: README missing information.

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Sat, 2004-05-01 at 20:55, Michael Koch wrote:
> Am Samstag, 1. Mai 2004 07:53 schrieb Steven Augart:
> > Mark, or anyone else with write access:
> >
> > Please stick this in before you ship 0.09 today.  Some status
> > information is missing from the README file that needs to be there
> > for the release.
> 
> I vote for this patch to be applied because sablevm is one of our major 
> VMs supporting GNU classpath. It should be mentioned I think.

Sure I'll add something like that and some of the other more or less
actively maintained projects based on GNU Classpath to the README if you
think that helps (although I am a bit afraid to offend some projects for
not being mentioned in such a list). The idea behind moving the long
list of (some now clearly obsolete) runtimes, compilers and other tools
from the README file to the stories.wml list was to make it more clear
for end users and hackers of GNU Classpath what they can use at this
moment out of the box (when they don't need a full development
environment).  When we keep compiler, runtime, dev-tools lists in
several places I am afraid one of the lists will get out of date quickly
and not really help users of GNU Classpath get up to speed quickly. The
README file for example wasn't updated for two years! So please help to
keep this up to date then in multiple places. (I have to explicitly
thank Patrik for maintaining the stories.wml and the other website pages
up to date!)

I didn't get any suggestions for the NEWS file so I made up this lists.
Which does look pretty impressive given the fact that 0.08 was released
just 6 weeks ago. Hope I didn't forget any important addition. And my
apologies for summarizing the GUI code changes as "Two big code drops
from the libgcj gui branch updating various java.awt and javax.swing
classes." there was really to much stuff in there to go through. It
would be great if the libgcj gui branch hackers could post a little
summary with each code drop in the future.

New in release 0.09 (2004/02/02)

* Includes updated GNU JAXP version from 2004-02-01.
* Native C code is now -ansi -pedantic (C89) clean and (almost) -Wall clean.
* java.io is now implemented by delegating most tasks directly to java.nio.
* Reworked/Optimized implementations of java.nio.Buffer and subclasses.
* New javax.print, javax.print.attribute[.standard] and javax.print.event
  packages and classes.
* java.text attributed iterators support.
* New javax.imageio, javax.imageio.event and javax.imageio.spi packages and
  classes.
* GNU Classpath can now load service providers that are described via
  META-INF/services/* resources in extension JARs. This is useful for
  implementing the various APIs that are supposed to be extensible via
  custom plugins. For details, please see the documentation of
  gnu.classpath.ServiceFactory.
  Application developers are strongly discouraged from calling glibj
  internal packages.  Instead, they might want invoke the newly implemented
  javax.imageio.spi.ServiceRegistry.lookupProviders, which is a standard
  method for loading plug-ins.
* New developers wanting to help the GNU Classpath project might want to
  review the greatly expanded Hacker Guide included in the doc directory
  or online at http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/docs/hacking.html
  Also the FAQ has been expanded. And when working from CVS you can now use
  a simple autogen.sh script to get all autotools magic done automagically.
* New configure option --with-glibj which defines how to install the glibj
  class files as zip, as flat directory files or both (zip|flat|both)
  [default=zip].  When working with multiple runtimes some of which might
  not support bootstrap classes in zip files the --with-glibj=both option
  is recommended (this does take extra disc space).
* Two big code drops from the libgcj gui branch updating various java.awt
  and javax.swing classes.
* Multiple java.net.InetAdress fixes and java.rmi fixes.
* ServerSocket.accept() now restarts listening when system call interrupted.
* Much cleanups to make standard API doc valid XHTML (not completed yet).
* A scan for unused variables and non-static invocation of static methods
  turned up a couple of subtle bugs which have now all been fixed.
* The Mauve testsuite has been cleaned up considerable and lots of issues
  in the GNU Classpath core class implementation have been fixed.
                                                                                
VM Interface changes:
                                                                                
* java.lang.Class/VMClass interface was changed. The interface now no
  longer requires an instance of VMClass for each Class instance. Instead
  the field vmdata in Class is now of type Object.
* GNU Classpath now assumes that JNI calls SetXField can modify final
  fields. This was previously used silently for System.in/out/err and should
  be considered as a feature now.
* A new VMProcess and a sample JNI C implementation are now provided to
  make Runtime.exec() work out of the box on some systems.  This requires
  a small change to VMRuntime.exec() when a runtime wants to use it as the
  default java.lang.Process implementation.
* The implementation of most of java.io through java.nio moved serveral
  runtime specific I/O methods. Most methods do have a generic default native
  C JNI implementation in native/jni/java-nio.
* Runtime support methods for java.io.File have been moved to VMFile which
  also comes with a default JNI C implementation.
* To support the new service provider mechanism runtimes must make sure that
  extension JARs are made accessible via the default context class loader.

These will be the last two changes before 0.09 will officially be
released. If you follow the commit-classpath list then you will have
noticed that two small, but important because they fix some nasty
regressions, code changed have gone in for automatically closing
no-longer used FileChannels and for making the Swing Test program work
again.

I didn't have time for one important action:

> - Add text/explanation about runtime VM classes from workshop paper
>   (and recent mailinglist discussion) to Integration Guide.

Which is a pity since there has been some confusing about this point for
some runtime implementers. If you haven't seen the paper please give it
a quick look:
http://www.klomp.org/mark/classpath/slides/gnu_classpath_workshop.html
Patches to integrate this text into the Integration Guide are very
welcome!

Cheers,

Mark

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