Re: Classpath build process and VM-specific issues

[Steven Augart]

Andrew Haley wrote:
> [....] I suppose it's possible that on some weird
> platform a pointer mat not fit in long.  In gcj was have a class
> RawData, which we know points to something that isn't an Object and
> isn't gcable.

Jikes RVM abstracts this away with a similar class, VM_Address.  And, 
as you said, Andrew, it would be very bad if it leaked into 
application code.

One day -- I have difficulty imagining it -- we are going to have 
processors that use an address space more than 64 bits wide.  Then 
again, in 1984 the VAX's 32-bit (4 GB) address space seemed huge.

Just as C is still in common use today, I expect that there will still 
be running Java code out there when we go over 64 bits of address 
space.  I further expect that a descendant of at least one of the Free 
 Java projects we discuss on this list will be out there running Java 
code.
--
Steven Augart

Jikes RVM, a free, open source, Virtual Machine:
http://oss.software.ibm.com/jikesrvm