Re: [Paperclips-discuss] JSP Engine, GPL licensed

[Nic Ferrier]

Erwin Bolwidt <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, 2002-04-24 at 00:11, Nic Ferrier wrote: 
> > Erwin Bolwidt <address@hidden> writes: 
> > > I've been working on a JSP compiler for the past few months. It's based  
> > > on KopiSusu - my Kopi-derived java compiler. I say a compiler, since it  
> > > parses and compiles JSP pages directly to .class files, without writing  
> > > any generated temporary java source code. This improves speed, error  
> > > reporting, and hopefully also reliability.  
> >  
> > Sure. It would be nicer if you'd used Kawa. But it still sounds cool. 
>  
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Kawa has a java compilation 
> module. It's important to have that, to compile scriptlets and 
> expressions, among others. 

You're not wrong.

However, it wouldn't be difficult to build with Kawa. It has
excellent tools for writing compilers.

  
> If you're talking about the byte code generator that's part of Kawa, 
> I've been thinking about that. Part of the work I've done on kopi susu 
> is to factor the byte code generation out of the java syntax tree (where 
> it was in kopi) so it can be maintained easier, and can be replaced as a 
> module by a different code generation backend. Creating a code generator 
> based on the gnu.bytecode package is one of the things I want to do when 
> the JSP compiler part is finished. 

That's *really* cool.

  
> Thanks, then I can focus on finishing and cleaning up the compiler 
> parts. Give me a few days, then I can send you the compiler code.  
> It may be easy if we can talk on the phone then so I can tell you which 
> parts are still being worked on etc so you won't get stuck because of 
> that. 

Sure. My phone number is 44 1892 611810 (business phone so I don't
mind publishing it).



> Currently, no. The current code is so different from last years' that it 
> would almost be a complete re-import anyway. 

I'll get rid of it then.


> Also, unless someone convinces me that it's not worth the trouble, I 
> want to rewrite all the remaining kopi code so I can change the license 
> in the future; I want to make it LGPL so it can work together with JBoss 
> (LGPL to my knowledge) and other non-GPL open source J2EE software. 

My preference is to use the GPL+exception (see the Classpath
project, the GCJ project and most of the ClasspathX project).

  
> I don't know if that is something that some people consider "bad" (if 
> you do, I don't want to start a long thread here, you could e-mail me 
> privately), but it may be a reason to set up its own module at 
> sourceforge (or savannah if that still satisfies the FSF's
> requirements) 

Most of the java hackers at GNU prefer to use GPL+exception instead
of the LGPL.

But you're right. Let's not talk about that here.


Nic