Re: J2ME classes in GNU classpath

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Christian,

On Sat, 2005-11-05 at 12:03 +0100, Christian Thalinger wrote:
> As you might know CACAO was always driven by some students doing some
> praktika or diploma thesis on a specific topic.  We now have a new
> student whose topic is to build J2ME classes on top of GNU classpath and
> integrate the whole stuff, so that we/someone is able to build a J2ME
> compatible (don't know exactly which version) classpath.
> 
> So, are you interested that this whole work is/will be part of the
> offical GNU classpath (of course with the usual FSF paperwork)?

Most certainly!  Do you anticipate working on something
compatible/similar to Micro Edition or just small memory/footprint for
cacao+classpath?

As Stephane pointed out there is no real canonical "Micro Edition" but a
large set of "profiles" and "configurations", with unfortunately some
incompatibilities.  Is there a specific profile/configuration set you
are interested in?

Another interesting point to investigate is look at limited devices that
don't have floating point operations, etc. Is it possible to create a
cacao vm and core library implementation that supports such a device?
How do we split up the library into a "non-floating" and "floating"
part? etc.

Having some sort of mini or even micro-classpath seems to be on the
wish-list of a lot of people. The most interesting thing seems to be how
to split up the entangled core library in a way that strips out
"non-essential" parts. It is also interesting to see if we are using any
algorithms that can be tweaked so they use less space (but maybe more
time). How to do this while keeping the code base as a whole
maintainable/easy to configure split up might be a non-trivial problem
though.

As you might have seen on planet.classpath.org the microedition emulator
that Clemens suggested seems to already work. This might be a good
starting point to get fully polished for cacao and then add/strip things
from the cacao+classpath+microemulator that are unnecessary and add any
needed tools (jar file pre-verifier springs to mind).

If you want something "micro-edition compatible" and low footprint you
get a combination of all of the above of course. I don't know how much
time/resources you have. In any case make sure that you have a clear
goal for yourself and the student, we as a community will certainly add
some ideas and suggestions on the way :)

Cheers,

Mark 
 
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