Re: [jchevm] porting harmony classlib to JCHEVM

Geir Magnusson Jr wrote:
> > The state of things now is that the VM API defined by Classlib
> > is, well, not very well defined :-)
>
> That's not actually true.  We may be missing documentation or something, 
> but the Harmony Classlib VM API is a well-tested production API used by 
> IBM in their commercial VM offerings.
>
> Hard to argue with that.
>
> That's why the IBM J9 VM that was offered for evaluation purposes just 
> works.

My understanding from Weldon's emails is that while it's true that
Classlib runs on J9, that's true because J9 provides its own "glue" for
Classlib to make things work. To make Classlib run on any other VM,
there would still be a lot of work that needs to be done, which
fortunately Weldon is already forging ahead on (if you don't believe
me, compare the two java.lang.Thread classes I mentioned (Classpath's
and Classlib's) for example).

My comment is simply that there would be *lots* of benefits if the
bottom of this glue layer we're developing is the same as the VM API
that Classpath uses, and moreover this is actually the easiest path
to take anyway.

-Archie

__________________________________________________________________________
Archie Cobbs      *        CTO, Awarix        *      http://www.awarix.com