classpath - News: GNU Classpath 0.18 released

GNU Classpath 0.18 released

Item posted by Mark Wielaard <mark> on Tue 06 Sep 2005 05:47:15 PM UTC.

We are pleased to announce a new developer snapshot of GNU Classpath.

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.

This is our first release after "The Big Merge" with GCC/GCJ.  GNU
Classpath can now be used as a subdirectory of libgcj inside the GCC
tree so it will be much easier to keep GCC up-to-date with the latest
GNU Classpath developer release snapshots.

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

  Added GNU JAWT for awt native interface support. Datatransfer
  clipboard updated to 1.5 including support for copy/paste of
  serialized objects, images and files.  Completed the org.omg
  PortableInterceptor, DynamicAny and Portable Object Adapter
  packages. Multi plaf support for Free Swing. Editing support for
  JTree and JTable. Lots of icons and look and feel improvements for
  Free Swing basic and metal themes. NIO FileChannel.map implemented
  and DirectByteBuffer put method speedups. Image loading speedups for
  awt. Support for darwin and solaris out of the box.

29 people actively contributed to this release and made 535 CVS
commits during the two months of development. diffstat since 0.17:
 994 files changed, 114744 insertions(+), 13663 deletions(-)

More details about the various changes and contributions below.

A full list of bug reports fixed for this release can be found at:
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=classpath&target_milestone=0.18

This release depends on gtk+ 2.4 for AWT support. But gtk+ 2.6 or
higher is recommended. Included, but not activated by default in this
release is a Graphics2D implementation based on the Cairo Graphics
framework (http://www.cairographics.org). Enabling this makes programs
like JFreeChart and JEdit start up on GNU Classpath based runtimes.
To enable this support install the cairo 0.5.x snapshot, configure GNU
Classpath with --enable-gtk-cairo.

One of the major focuses of the GNU Classpath project is expanding
and using the Mauve test suite for Compatibility, Completeness and
Correctness checking.  Various groups around GNU Classpath collaborate
on the free software Mauve test suite which contains 32.000+ core
library tests.  Mauve has various modules for testing core class
library implementations, byte code verifiers, source to byte code and
native code compiler tests.  Mauve also contains the Wonka visual test
suite and the Jacks Compiler Killer Suite.
See for more information: http://www.sourceware.org/mauve/
This release passes 31194 out of 32253 Mauve core library tests.

Conformance reports for the included jaxp support can be found in the
doc/README.jaxp file.

GNU Classpath 0.18 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-0.18.tar.gz
MD5sum: c0650c257aa93eafb709553f172f0bbb
SHA1sum: 28061c750244cac4ff0151da6aba183b94b98b25

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/

New in release 0.18 (Sep 6, 2005)
(See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.)

• GNU JAWT implementation, the AWT Native Interface, which allows

  direct access to native screen resources from within a Canvas's
  paint method.  GNU Classpath Examples comes with a Demo, see
  examples/README.

• awt.datatransfer updated to 1.5 with supports for FlavorEvents.

  The gtk+ awt peers now allow copy/paste of text, images, uris/files
  and serialized objects with other applications and tracking
  clipboard change events with gtk+ 2.6 (for gtk+ 2.4 only text and
  serialized objects are supported). A GNU Classpath Examples
  datatransfer Demo was added to show the new functionality.

• org.omg.PortableInterceptor and related functionality in other

  packages is now implemented:
    - The sever and client interceptors work as required since 1.4.
    - The IOR interceptor works as needed for 1.5.

• The org.omg.DynamicAny package is completed and passes the prepared

  tests.

• The Portable Object Adapter should now support the output of the

  recent IDL to java compilers. These compilers now generate servants and
  not CORBA objects as before, making the output depended on the existing
  POA implementation. Completing POA means that such code can already be
  tried to run on Classpath. Our POA is tested for the following usager
  scenarios:
    - POA converts servant to the CORBA object.
    - Servant provides to the CORBA object.
    - POA activates new CORBA object with the given Object Id
      (byte array) that is later accessible for the servant.
    - During the first call, the ServantActivator provides servant for
      this and all subsequent calls on the current object.
    - During each call, the ServantLocator provides servant for this call
      only.
    - ServantLocator or ServantActivator forwards call to another server.
    - POA has a single servant, responsible for all objects.
    - POA has a default servant, but some objects are explicitly
      connected to they specific servants.
  The POA is verified using tests from the former cost.omg.org.     

• The javax.swing.plaf.multi.* package is now implemented.
• Editing and several key actions for JTree and JTable were implemented.
• Lots of icons and look and feel improvements for Free Swing basic

  and metal themes were added.  Try running the GNU Classpath Swing
  Demo in examples (gnu.classpath.examples.swing.Demo) with:
  -Dswing.defaultlaf=javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicLookAndFeel
  -Dswing.defaultlaf=javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel

• Start of styled text capabilites for java.swing.text.
• NIO FileChannel.map implementation, fast bulk put implementation for

  DirectByteBuffer (speeds up this method 10x).

• Split gtk+ awt peers event handling in two threads and improve gdk

  lock handling (solves several AWT lock ups).

• Speed up awt Image loading.
• Updated TimeZone data against Olson tzdata2005l.
• Make zip and jar UTF-8 "clean".
• "native" code builds and compiles (warning free) on Darwin and

  Solaris.

Runtime interface changes:

• All native resource "pointers" in the VM interface classes are now

  exposed as gnu.classpath.Pointer objects. This might impact runtimes
  that optimize and support java.nio.DirectByteBuffers. Creating these
  classes and accessing the contents as void * pointers for the native
  reference JNI implementation is done through the
  JCL_NewRawDataObject and JCL_GetRawData functions.

• Simplified the Class/VMClass interface.
• Removed loadedClasses map from ClassLoader. It's now the VMs

  responsibility to manage the list of defined and loaded classes for
  each class loader.

• Moved native methods from java.lang.reflect.Proxy to VMProxy.
• Added hook to VMClassLoader to allow VM to do class caching.

New Untested/Disabled Features:

  The following new features are included, but not ready for
  production yet. They are explicitly disabled and not supported. But
  if you want to help with the development of these new features we
  are interested in feedback. You will have to explicitly enable them
  to try them out (and they will most likely contain bugs). If you are
  interested in any of these then please join the mailing-list and
  follow development in CVS.

• QT4 AWT peers, enable by giving configure --enable-qt-peer.
• JDWP framework, enable by deleting the jdwp references from

  lib/standard.omit and vm/reference/standard.omit. No default
  implementation is provided. Work is being done on gcj/gij
  integration.

• StAX java.xml.stream, enable by deleting the gnu.xml.stream and

  java.xml.stream references in lib/standard.omit.


The following people helped with this release:

Aaron Luchko (Lots of JDWP work)
Andreas Tobler (Darwin and Solaris testing and fixing
Andrew Haley (gcj build speedups)
Anthony Balkissoon (Lots of Free Swing work including JTable editing)
Archie Cobbs (Build fixes)
Audrius Meskauskas (Lots of omg corba work plus testing and documenting)
Bastiaan Huisman (TimeZone bug fixing)
Casey Marshall (NIO FileChannel.map support, security and policy updates)
Chris Burdess (StAX work and gnu xml fixes)
Christian Schlichtherle (Zip fixes and cleanups)
Christian Thalinger (64-bit cleanups)
Dalibor Topic (Qt4 build infrastructure)
David Gilbert (Basic and Metal icon and plaf and lots of documenting)
Guilhem Lavaux (JCL native Pointer updates)
Ingo Proetel (Image, Logger and URLClassLoader updates)
Ito Kazumitsu (NetworkInterfaces implementation and updates)
Jan Roehrich (BasicTreeUI updates)
Jeroen Frijters (VMProxy and VMClassLoader updates, RMIClassLoader fixes)
Keith Seitz (Lots of JDWP work)
Kelley Cook (Build fixes)
Lillian Angel (Lots of Free Swing work including JTree editing)
Mark Wielaard (Clipboard implementation, build and release infrastructure)
Rainer Orth (Build fixes)
Robert Schuster (Documentation updates and beans fixes)
Roman Kennke (Lots of Free Swing work including styled text)
Sven de Marothy (Qt4 peers)
Thomas Fitzsimmons (Lots of gtk+ awt peer work)
Tom Tromey (Lots of fixes including coordinating The Big Merge)
Wolfgang Baer (GapContent bug fixes)

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