SableVM support for Sun's SDK features...

[ Moving to sablevm-user where it belongs ]

On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 12:11 +0000, [email protected] wrote:
> Hi, i am developing an application for a PDA with Linus OS, and i need to know 
> if the SableVm platform is compatible with jdk1.3.1 and swing.
> Thanks for your help.

On Wed, 2005-30-03 at 09:23 -0600, Jackson, Martin* wrote:
> I read a little on the sablevm.org site, but missed what I was looking
> for... So here's my newbie questions,
> 
> "How does SableVM compare to the Java VMs from Sun?"
> 
> Which Sun VM is SableVM 1.1.9 compatible with?

It is a commonly asked question that does not have a simple answer.


The fact is that the library included in Sun's JDK grows enormously with
every release, but it doesn't mean people actually use all of it.  It
would seem that actually the bigger the library grows, the less % of it
is usually used.  Also, the content of this library seems to be
"Whatever Sun is able to throw in at the moment".

What follows, is that it's not very economic to rewrite every rarely
used feature of Sun's library.  While SableVM's Class library (which is
largerly based on GNU Classpath) will eventually be compatible with
bigger part of Sun's libraries, the Sun's numbering completly does not
fit the gradual development model of Free Software.

It is therefore hard to answer a question "Is SableVM's class library
compatible with 1.3.1/1.4.2/1.5.0 Sun's JDK?" in a yes/no fashion.


The practice shows that most of the server applications work rather
well, some bigger applications (like Eclipse) are quite usable, but
unfortunatelly Swing support is still lacking many features.

You can see screenshots
	http://sablevm.org/screenshot.html
and archives
	http://sablevm.org/lists/sablevm-user
and the bug tracking system
	http://sablevm.org/bugs/open

for samples and informations on what works at the moment.  In particular
Swing is under heavy development (mainly due to RedHat investment,
AFAIK), so it is expected to improve steadily.

>  Does it handle the new 1.5 byte code?

One of the features that we plan to add in the May release will be
the long-awaited support for 1.5 class format and bytecode.

> What testing suite was used?

Unfortuantelly due to the licensing and financial terms Sun's TCK is not
practially available (as of now).  There exist a great and constantly
updated testing suite called Mauve, which mostly focuses on testing the
class library, but of course it does not give Sun's "stamp of approval".


I am sure that's not exactly the kind of answer you expected, but that
was the most adequate one I could give you.

Thank you for your interest in SableVM.  Let us know of your experiences
and don't hesitate to report bugs.  We are able, and we do fix many
problems quickly, especially if they are related to the JVM itself.

Hope this helps,

			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