1.1.7 final(?) tarballs available

Hi everybody,

Release of 1.1.7
-----------------

http://sablevm.org/download/release/1.1.7/

Unless anybody screams this will become the final 1.1.7 this monday
evening (eastern canada time) and I'll start sending out announcements. 

Here's the NEWS section for 1.1.7:

- Imported new GNU Classpath CVS snapshot as of Sun Oct 10 18:00:00
  UTC 2004.
- Added handling of Jar/Zip files on boot classpath (closes BUG:2).
- Provided user-friendly failure messages for bootstrap problems.  This
  should get rid of the hated "sablevm: cannot create vm".
- Allowed for multiple elements and prepending/appending to boot class
  path.
- Added --with-profiling switch to make most functions non-"static".
- Made sablevm-classpath install its files in more standard locations.
- Explicitely disallowed compilation of classpath with gcj or kjc (it
  never worked reliably).
- Made jikes and gcc be less verbose by default (to avoid confusion).
- Removed some obsolete code from various places.
- Added new Generational Garbage Collector ("experimental", available on
  request, by passing --with-gc=gencopy to configure).
- Made several bugfixes of:
  - JNI methods not returning NULL on errors (closes BUG:12).
  - IsInstanceOf always returning JNI_FALSE (closes BUG:63).
  - A copy&paste mistake in PopLocalFrame (closes BUG:62).
  - Several JNI methods not returning NULL on errors (closes BUG:12).
  - IsInstanceOf always returning JNI_FALSE (closes BUG:63).
  - "New array" memory allocation size overflow (closes BUG:8).
  - Out-of-source builds (closes BUG:55).
  - Handling of 'double' values on ARM.
  - FPU in 64-bit precision mode on Linux / Intel x86 (closes BUG:1).
  - F2L, F2I, D2L, D2I not checking for overflows (closes BUG:54).
  - SIGPIPE killing the VM (closes BUG:51).
  - GNU make detection on non-GNU/Linux platforms.
  - Case-insensitive grepping for "Main-Class:" string in MANIFEST.MF.

The GGC was supposed to be the first, but since we know there's some
problem we'll save it for next time (will you make it till 1.1.8 Carl?).


Some notes.
------------
The release itself took me only 3 hours.  That's good.  The bad thing is
that it took a month to do that, mainly because getting the thing tested
is time-consuming (and sometimes not too entertaining).  This is
hopefuly being addressed by one of our students.

Next time I find 3 free hours (early december?) I'll try to set up the
creation of daily tarballs of staging.

Also, I think we should really release more regularly, eg. once a month
would be fine with me.  The requirement here is that we are able to
easily run tests and get meaningful results for every new version.

Mauve
------
Actually I tried to run Mauve on SableVM, but all I got was all tests
failing :-/  Surely I did something wrong.  Have you tried to run Mauve
on SableVM?  Or could you try it?  Can you describe procedure of running
the tests "the right way"?  (good RTFMs are welcomed, as always).



Thanks to all who have helped 1.1.7 happen,

			Grzegorz B. Prokopski
-- 
Grzegorz B. Prokopski           <[email protected]>
SableVM - Free, LGPL'ed Java VM  http://sablevm.org
Why SableVM ?!?                  http://sablevm.org/wiki/Features
Debian GNU/Linux - the Free OS   http://www.debian.org