classpath - News: GNU Classpath 0.92 "Bling! Bling!" released

GNU Classpath 0.92 "Bling! Bling!" released

Item posted by Mark Wielaard <mark> on Thu 10 Aug 2006 12:00:09 PM UTC.

We are proud to announce the release of GNU Classpath 0.92 Bling! Bling!

This is the first release that has a full graphics 2D implemenation
based on Cairo enabled by default. This enables the use of applications
like JEdit, FlickrBackup and JFreeChart out of the box. Screenshots of
CairoGraphics2D at http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/samples-gnu.html

Also new in this release is the inclusion of an applet viewer
and plugin that can be embedded in webbrowsers or other applications.
It works on any platform supported by the various runtimes based on
GNU Classpath, including 64 bit architectures.

Some other highlights in this release (more extensive list below):

  An alternative awt peer implementation based on Escher that uses the
  X protocol directly. Various ImageIO providers for png, gif and bmp
  images. Support for reading and writing midi files and reading .au
  and .wav files have been added. Various tools and support classes
  have been added for jar, native2ascii, serialver, keytool, jarsigner.
  A GConf based util.peers backend has been added. Support for using
  alternative root certificate authorities with the security and crypto
  packages. Start of javax.management and runtime lang.managment
  runtime support. NIO channels now support scatter-gather operations.

GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create
free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools
for the java programming language.

The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed
at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development
platforms. For example the GCC (gcj) and Kaffe projects will use the
developer snapshots as a base for future versions. More projects based
on GNU Classpath: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/stories.html

Also released is classpath-generics-0.92 an experimental branch with
support for all the new 1.5 language features such as generics and
enumerations. ECJ, JamVM, IKVM and Cacao are known to support the
generics release. And you can use it to run Eclipse 3.1 with it to
develop programs that use the new 1.5 language and core library
additions. classpath-generics is a work in progress and not as
extensively tested as our regular releases. But please try it out if
you want to help us test the new 1.5 support of the core libraries.

The GNU Classpath developers site http://developer.classpath.org/
provides detailed information on how to start with helping the GNU
Classpath project and gives an overview of the core class library
packages currently provided.  For each snapshot release generated
documentation is provided through the GNU Classpath Tools gjdoc
project.  A documentation generation framework for java source
files used by the GNU project. Full documentation on the currently
implementated packages and classes can be found at:
http://developer.classpath.org/doc/

For more information about the project see also:

- GNU Classpath home page:
  http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/

- Developer information (wiki):
  http://developer.classpath.org/

- Full class documentation
  http://developer.classpath.org/doc/

- GNU Classpath hackers:
  http://planet.classpath.org/

- Autobuilder, current build status, build snapshots:
  http://builder.classpath.org/

- Application test pages (wiki)
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/Applets
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeAWTTestApps
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSwingTestApps
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSWTTestApps

- GNU Classpath hacking with Eclipse (wiki)
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathHackingWithEclipse

- GNU Classpath promotion banners:
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathBanners

GNU Classpath 0.92 can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/classpath/
or one of the ftp.gnu.org mirrors
http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

File: classpath-0.92.tar.gz
MD5sum: 4603ef3e593713d94788b919bc0b6c75
SHA1sum: fab3d6d360f6e9d712fc999f3f085e9f9c8c641a

File: classpath-0.92-generics.tar.gz (EXPERIMENTAL)
MD5sum: 3efacbefe0224dfe57d9049619095b32
SHA1sum: 7db4d90e36e40ec676ac813f300265849e36e223

New in release 0.92 (Aug 9, 2006)
(See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.)

• libjawtgnu.so has been renamed libjawt.so for binary compatibility.

  libjawt.so should be installed in a VM-specific directory rather
  than directly in /usr/lib.  Proprietary VMs put their libjawt.so
  implementations in VM-specific directories but search /usr/lib first.
  If GNU Classpath's libjawt.so is installed in /usr/lib it will create
  problems for people who use a proprietary VM to run AWT Native
  Interface applications.

• The GdkGraphics2D backend has been made the default.  There is no

  longer an explicit dependency on Cairo, the --enable-gtk-cairo
  configure option is gone, and GTK 2.8 or higher is now required to
  build the GTK peers.

• A Mozilla plugin, 'gcjwebplugin', is now included.  It introduces a

  dependency on the Mozilla plugin support headers and libraries.

• New java implementations of png and gif imageio readers and writers.
• A tools.texinfo document has been created and now includes

  documentation about:
  * appletviewer
  * gcjwebplugin
  * jarsigner
  * keytool

• Several new tools are now included:

  * appletviewer
  * jar
  * native2ascii
  * serialver
  * keytool
  * jarsigner
  A new configure option --enable-tool-wrappers causes wrapper
  binaries to be built for VMs that support the JNI Invocation API.

• javax.sound.midi providers have been added to read and

  write standard MIDI files.

• A javax.sound.sampled .au and .wav file readers have been added.
• New Java Virtual Machine Tool Interface header, jvmti.h.
• AWT peers for X Windows based on Escher (a pure java X protocol

  implementation) have been added. So far it supports AWT 1.1 style
  Graphics, image loading via ImageIO (PNG, GIF and BMP images in this
  release), top level components as well as mouse and keyboard input.
  It is capable of running many Swing applications. Graphics2D and
  AWT widgets are not yet supported with this peer set.

• GConf based util.peers backend (see the --enable-gconf-peer and

  --enable-default-preferences-peer configure options).

• Support for batch importing trusted certificates for use with ssl

  connections (see script/import-cacerts.sh).

• NIO scatter-gather channel support.

Runtime interface changes:

• A new class, VMURLConnection, is used to implement

  URLConnection.guessContentTypeFromStream.  The reference
  implementation uses libmagic (and falls back to doing nothing if
  libmagic is not available).

• The method gnu.java.io.PlatformHelper.toCanonicalForm() has been

  replaced with a JNI implementation of VMFile.toCanonicalForm() for
  GNU/Posix systems.

• A new class, VMRuntimeMXBeanImpl, is used to implement

  the low-level support of the runtime management bean.
  VMs should use it to supply the input arguments and start
  time of the VM.  In addition, one of sun.boot.class.path
  or java.boot.class.path should be defined by the VM to
  support the optional boot class path access functionality.

• The Unsafe class was moved back to the place expected by the JSR 166

  reference implementation.  We've also added a couple other new VM
  classes to support the JSR 166 code -- sun.reflect.Reflection and
  sun.reflect.misc.ReflectUtil.

• Another new class, VMClassLoadingMXBeanImpl, is used to implement

  the low-level support of the class loading management bean.
  VMs need to supply it with information about how many classes
  are currently loaded, how many have been unloaded and whether
  verbose class loading output is on or off.  Provision should also
  be made for the latter to be toggled at runtime.

• VMThreadMXBeanImpl is used to implement the low-level support

  of the thread management bean.  Providing this interface requires
  providing a fair amount of information about threads, including
  optional time and contention monitoring, and instances of the
  new ThreadInfo class in java.lang.management.  getState() has also
  been added to the VMThread interface; this is required by the bean
  as well as java.lang.Thread.

• VMMemoryMXBeanImpl is used to implement the low-level support

  of the memory management bean.  Providing this interface requires
  providing information about the levels of heap and non-heap memory,
  and the number of objects eligible for garbage collection.

• VMCompilationMXBeanImpl is used to allow for optional compilation

  time support for Just-In-Time compilers.

• VMMemoryPoolMXBeanImpl is used to implement the low-level support

  of the memory pool beans.  Providing this interface requires
  providing memory usage statistics for each supported bean.

• VMManagementFactory provides the names of the memory pools,

  memory managers and garbage collectors maintained by the virtual
  machine.  These are used to create the beans by the ManagementFactory.

• VMMemoryManagerMXBeanImpl and VMGarbageCollectorMXBeanImpl provide

  low-level support for memory managers (including the specific subclass
  of garbage collecting memory managers).  The interfaces for these
  require no more than enumerating the number of collections and the
  time spent (for garbage collectors) and a relationship to the memory
  pools (for all), along with a validity check.

The following people helped with this release:

Andreas Tobler, Andrew John Hughes, Anthony Balkissoon, Anthony Green,
Archie Cobbs, Audrius Meskauskas, Carsten Neumann, Casey Marshall,
Chris Burdess, Christian Thalinger, C. Scott Marshall, Dalibor Topic,
David Gilbert, Francis Kung, Gary Benson, Henrik Gulbrandsen, Ingo
Proetel, Ito Kazumitsu, Jeroen Frijters, Jim Huang, Kazuya Ujihara,
Keith Seitz, Kyle Galloway, Lillian Angel, Mario Torre, Mark Wielaard,
Martin Platter, Matthew Burgess, Matthew Wringe, Matt Wringe, Michael
Barker, Miriam Schuster, Olivier Jolly, Paul Jenner, Raif S. Naffah,
Robert Schuster, Roman Kennke, Sven de Marothy, Tania Bento, Thomas
Fitzsimmons, Thomas Minor, Tom Tromey and Vivek Lakshmanan

We would also like to thank the numerous bug reporters and testers!