[ELDK] Fwd: Fwd: OpenJDK and Other Questions

[Jeffrey Haemer]

This info, forwarded from Tom Tromey<http://homepages.peakpeak.com/%7Etromey/>,
may be useful.  (I asked Tom whether he might have something to say because
he was the gcj maintainer.)  Hope this helps.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 2:31 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: [ELDK] OpenJDK and Other Questions
To: Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>


Feel free to forward.
I wasn't sure if I should just CC him.

>> GCJ is an interesting alternative - although I hadn't given it much
>> consideration up to this point. Previously I'd put together a pretty
>> comprehensive platform that utilized a number of Java-based
>> initiatives (e.g. Tomcat, JSF, OpenJPA, Spring Framework). Native
>> compilation using GCJ definitely adds another layer of complexity to
>> the already difficult task of sorting out open source issues, getting
>> each project running and integrated on an embedded platform, etc.

>> I haven't fully worked through all the pros/cons of such an approach -
>> but thanks for highlighting this as another option.

>> Continued support and development of the GCJ initiative is also a bit
>> of a concern. One of the lead developers on the GCJ Project seems to
>> advocate consolidation of the efforts and wouldn't mind seeing GCJ
>> superseded by OpenJDK. Seems to be an ongoing topic with no clear
>> outcome as of yet, however.

These days the free software Java landscape is a bit odd.  There are a
number of overlapping solutions but no single one that fits all
scenarios.

I did think at one point that gcj would rapidly fade away.  This is
going more slowly than I predicted, mostly because OpenJDK is still
not ported to enough architectures.  There's some work going on here
-- see IcedTea and "shark" (or for another approach, the Cacao
project) -- but it may be a while before this is fully ready.

There are still embedded folks using gcj as well.  I'm not as sure
what OpenJDK offers in this area.  Maybe gcj is still friendlier here.

I would say, if you can use OpenJDK, you are probably better off with
it.  The class library is more complete (and is the canonical one
besides).  Being the reference implementation, it also is somewhat
more supportive of the questionable java code one runs into in the
wild.

Tom



-- 
Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
720-837-8908 [cell]
http://goyishekop.blogspot.com