Java VM for AOS4

[tonyw]

@Kay: Sorry, old son, it's your avatar that looks feminine.

ne_one et al: No, I'm not looking for a big job. I know from 30+ years' programming experience how much work it would be to port the whole Sun implementation to a new platform.

However, the Kaffe implementation already exists, already runs on a 68k Amiga and might run on an AmigaOne out of the box. It might even be doable (NB: not 'easy') to make an AOS4 PPC-native version if the 68k version is a success.

And it would be a useful bootstrap for porting other, more thorough implementations to AOS4, like those written in Java.

Like most *nix ports, it relies on ixemul to work, the code itself is not changed from one platform to another. So there are a couple of challenges there, and it might give me something to do for the Kommunity.

(I can see myself in a couple of decades, in a nursing home with my old AmigaTwo laptop, shooing away the nurse because build #29158 is nearly complete)

tony

[ne_one]

I just read an interesting tidbit on ann.lu that Genesi is getting Alan Havemose to port a JVM to MorphOS.

Anyone have any additional details on this?

[zacman]

>I just read an interesting tidbit on ann.lu that
>Genesi is getting Alan Havemose to port a JVM to
>MorphOS.
>Anyone have any additional details on this?

http://www.amiga-news.de/archiv02/020417_interview_bb_pt.shtml

"I would like to also mention that Dr. Allan Havemose
is also part of our team. Allan, who just became a
proud father for the first time (14 April 2002), was
the Software Engineering Director at CBM with
responsibility for the Amiga operating systems OS
2.1, OS 3.0 and OS 3.1 on the A1200, A3000, A4000,
AmigaCD, and various other platforms. As you know,
Allan was more recently involved with Gateway's
effort to resurrect the Amiga. Allan is developing the
Java Virtual Machine for the Pegasos/eclipsis and
will work also on the Linux side of our efforts. He
brings professional product development and
product management to our team. "

[Kent]

ne_one wrote:
I just read an interesting tidbit on ann.lu that Genesi is getting Alan Havemose to port a JVM to MorphOS.

Anyone have any additional details on this?

As for the version of the JVM and who all is working on this with Alan, no clue.  I haven't been able to get a word in to the MorphOS camp in ages.  I guess all the questions and requests I made kind of pushed me away.  I'm curious though, why has there never been a good clear picture of MorphOS in action (a.k.a. screengrab)?  I'd also like to hear what their plans are for alternate processors as well, but that doesn't look likely.

Personal opinion, I like Olaf Barthel's stance on ixemul:  "if a program requires ixemul.library to run, something is wrong".

:pint:

[ne_one]

@Kent

"As for the version of the JVM and who all is working on this with Alan, no clue. I haven't been able to get a word in to the MorphOS camp in ages."

Quite a coup to get him on board. Dave Haynie is apparently doing some consulting for Hyperion. I wonder what Mike Sinz and all the other lads are up to? Still with Scala perhaps.

"I'm curious though, why has there never been a good clear picture of MorphOS in action (a.k.a. screengrab)?"

Good point. Surely someone should be able to share these publicly.

"I'd also like to hear what their plans are for alternate processors as well, but that doesn't look likely."

In the MorphOS primer they indicated that x86 is out of the question. Too bad... this would have provided a bit more incentive for Hyperion to do the same.

[Kent]

ne_one wrote:
Quite a coup to get him on board. Dave Haynie is apparently doing some consulting for Hyperion. I wonder what Mike Sinz and all the other lads are up to? Still with Scala perhaps.

Alan is definately an OS genious considering all of the components he worked up for OS3.0.  I haven't seen any confirmation other than rumor with Dave Haynie and Hyperion though, would be a good thing (tm).  No clue what Mike Sinz is doing though, haven't heard from him in ages.

:pint:

[Snuden]

What thoughts?

I say go for it! It would be great to have Java on AmigaOS4.

[ne_one]

@Kent

"I haven't seen any confirmation other than rumor with Dave Haynie and Hyperion though, would be a good thing (tm)."

This was actually mentioned in the Boing Attitude interview with Ben Hermans that appeared here as a news item earlier today.

Was the article removed for some reason?

[tonyw]

OK, it seems no one is officially working on a JVM at the moment, so I'll proceed. My aim at the moment (to be modified if and when necessary) is:
1) Get the kaffe sources and expand (done)
2) Compile for 68k AOS (3.9). This is not as easy as it sounds, because the kaffe build is supposed to run under a Linux/Unix environment, with all the shell script files, etc. I am not a Unix expert and I might just throw away all the auto configure stuff and start from scratch with hand-coded makefiles.
3) Run test suite (supplied) and check build.

When it reaches this stage, it ought to be portable (read: re-compilable) to AOS 4, assuming ixemul can be ported. If someone else were to port ixemul, that would be grand.

4) (The real work) remove dependencies on ixemul and make kaffe stand-alone. This may not be feasible with the classic Exec (multiple threads problem).

We'll see how we go. I don't have a fast access website, so any output from this exercise will have to be hosted by someone.

tony