Re: Help and input needed

[Dalibor Topic]

Hi Mark,

here's a short update on what's been happening:

Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 23:10, Dalibor Topic wrote:
>
> > > - java-gnome bindings. I have already posted it on this list twice so I
> > >  won't repeat how important I think it is to have our stuff work nicely
> > >  with it!
> >
> > O.K., I've done a little bit on this today, and got in touch with the 
> > java-gnome devs. I still haven't managed to build java-gnome with kaffe, 
> > but I'll give it another go on thursday. Otoh, the devs have told me 
> > that their build now works with kaffe, so there is some progress there ;)
>
>
> And there is a new release out that should make it easier for people to
> test this: http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1538
> http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/java-gnome/java-gnome-0.8.2.tar.bz2?download

I'll do this over the holidays.

> > [UserLinux], I want to approach them with a balanced 
> > e-mail that corrects their mistakes and recommends a GNU classpath based 
> > VM, offering a general overview (names, links) of Classpath based VMs, 
> > like my recent post to debian-java, just without the details about the 
> > VMs. Then I'd follow up with an e-mail on kaffe, and our efforts to run 
> > enterprise-ish software on it. I'd cross-post to GNU Classpath mailing 
> > list and invite other VM developers to reply to the mail then as well, 
> > describing their VMs and why they think it would be a good choice for 
> > UserLinux. Then whoever is making the decisions about UserLinux can make 
> > those decisions with a little bit more background than they have now.
>
>
> That would be very much appreciated!

I started the userlinux free java discussion with this thread [1] and 
continued in this one [2] to argue against a non-free java runtime, with 
a positive decision from UserLinux project leader Bruce Perens [3] and 
I'm now trying to help them figure out what they need, and how to 
contribute to the free java runtime community [4].

> > > - Savannah GNU Classpath code checking
> > >  We need to check if someone has tempered with any code when they had
> > >  access to the CVS server. Doing checks against kaffe and libgcj
> > >  sources should help with this.
> > >  See also http://savannah.gnu.org/statement.html
> >
> > I've never (fortunately) had to do someting like this before, so I'm 
> > slightly confused about what exactly I am supposed to do. Should I check 
> > if my diffs match my patches I contributed to GNU Classpath? diff 
> > everything against kaffe's source tree?
>
>
> If you could provide a list of files/classes that kaffe has imported
> from GNU Classpath and that you are sure about that they haven't seen
> strange changes in kaffe CVS recently that would already help.
> In general it would be nice to have a comparison page for kaffe like
> libgcj has. See http://gcc.gnu.org/java/libgcj-classpath-compare.html

Mostly the reason for the differences is the existence of unmerged 
patches on both sides (text, serialization, rmi), really. I'll post a 
list of files and why they differ on the weekend.

On a side note, I'm trying [5] to get people from different java 
application packaging efforts (rhug, jpackage, debian, gentoo ...) to 
think about combining their efforts on some meta aspects of packaging 
java applications. I'll keep the list updated as the discussion evolves. 
That woould be a way to involve freedesktop.org in our efforts, if it 
turns out that people from the diverse packaging efforts can find a 
common interest.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] http://lists.userlinux.com/pipermail/discuss/2003-December/001652.html
[2] http://lists.userlinux.com/pipermail/discuss/2003-December/001677.html
[3] http://lists.userlinux.com/pipermail/discuss/2003-December/001802.html
[4] http://lists.userlinux.com/pipermail/discuss/2003-December/001873.html
[5] 
http://lists.zarb.org/pipermail/jpackage-discuss/2003-December/003774.html