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GNU Classpath 0.95 "Take Five" released

Item posted by Mark Wielaard <mark> on Mon 23 Apr 2007 11:54:50 AM UTC.

We are proud to announce the release of GNU Classpath 0.95 "Take Five"

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

This release adds some serious jazz (more extensive list below):

  Full merge of 1.5 generics work. Bootstrappable with OpenJDK javac
  compiler. URLConnection timeout support. TimeZone can use platform
  zoneinfo file when available. The Collection classes, lang.management
  and util.spi have been updated to 1.6. Addition of 1.6 ServiceLoader.
  Speedup for cairo and freetype Graphics2D support. The ASM library
  is now included. Better detection of browser plugin mechanisms for
  gcjwebplugin applet support in mozilla, iceweasel and firefox.

Screenshots of applications (eclipse, jedit, jfreechart, "jgecko",
statcvs and more) working out of the box with GNU Classpath can be
found at http://developer.classpath.org/screenshots/

This release switches fully towards the 1.5 generics work that we
previously released separately as classpath-generics. All this work is
now fully integrated in the main release and various runtimes (gcj,
cacao, jamvm, ikvm, etc) have been extended to take advantage of the
new generics, annotations and enumeration support in the core
library. From now on we intend to no longer release both a
non-generics and a generics version. But if there is demand we might
consider resurrecting the non-generics 1.4 branch with selected
bug-fixes (depending on having a branch maintainer). Work is on the
way to also add the new 1.6 additions, a start for selected packages
has been made in this release.

On November 13 2006 (now known as Java Liberation Day) Sun decided to
start releasing all its Java ME, SE and EE implementations under the
GPL.  http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/ For the last decade
the GNU Classpath community has worked together with various other
free software projects to help people avoid the so called "Java Trap"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html As the FSF press release
welcoming the Sun announcement said: 'Now, Sun has begun disarming the
"Java Trap", turning it from a pitfall into a valuable foundation for
future free software development.'
http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-welcomes-gpl-java.html

This release supports compiling and running the GPL OpenJDK javac
compiler using GNU Classpath based runtimes and compilers and to
compile the GNU Classpath core libraries, tools and examples with the
OpenJDK javac compiler itself. Making it a full bootstrap compiler for
GNU Classpath and related projects. We hope to extend support and work
together with the OpenJDK community over time.

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/

Since gjdoc does not yet fully support all the new 1.5 language
additions used in this version of GNU Classpath the documentation has
also been generated using the GPL project sinjdoc which doesn't
provide all the features gjdoc has (-linksource, -licensetext,
-validhtml, @Link support in comments in particular) but has a better
1.5 language parser: http://developer.classpath.org/sinjdoc/

We are looking into how to extend the documentation experience based
on these two tools in the future. Please contact the mailinglist if
you like to help with this effort.

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/

- 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 0.95 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-0.95.tar.gz
MD5sum: 08638bb9221460cc311a1c5508083ed8
SHA1sum: 9a3b276853a07ecc8753217a6db24afffab2cb2c

New in release 0.95 (Apr 23, 2007)
(See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.)


Runtime interface changes:


The following people helped with this release:

Andreas Tobler, Andrew Haley, Andrew John Hughes, Cameron McCormack,
Casey Marshall, Chris Burdess, Christian Thalinger, Dalibor Topic,
David Daney, Edwin Steiner, Francis Kung, Gary Benson, Ito Kazumitsu,
Jakub Jelinek, Jeroen Frijters, Keith Seitz, Kyle Galloway, Marco
Trudel, Mario Torre, Mark Wielaard, Matthias Klose, Petteri Raty,
Rafael Teixeira, Raif S. Naffah, Roman Kennke, Stepan Kasal, Sven de
Marothy, Tania Bento, Thomas Fitzsimmons and Tom Tromey

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

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