Tip for Intellij IDEA 3.0.5v2 with 1.4.1-p3^H4

[David Bullock]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Alexey Zelkin wrote:

> hi,
>
> On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 01:01:54PM +0200, Sheldon Hearn wrote:
>
> > > I can well imagine that having access to quick compiling machine
> > > would be a basic need (mine's nothing special, BTW, just an Athlon
> > > XP 1800 with little else to do).  The FreeBSD foundation don't
> > > exactly say what they're already doing, planning to do, and how
> > > well aligned their actuals and their budget is, so it is hard to
> > > know how to contribute.
> >
> > That's a fair comment.
> >
> > Greg, is it possible to open up the schedule of the BSD Java Porting
> > Team to the public?
>
> I don't think that we have any specific schedule.  And I can't talk on
> behalf of Foundation, but can share recent progress with my work (i.e.
> porting of jdk1.4.x)
>
> In last weeks (followed -p4 release) I have complete with JDK 1.4.2 port.
> It's now in BSD/Java CVS and soon we'll have new patchset released.

Well, this is great news to be sure.  That will have been a
quite quick turnaround, IMHO, and you guys are to be congratulated.
I'm very grateful for the hard work that has been put in.  But
JDK 1.5 will be coming out in the next 6 months (one hopes), and
that's barely enough time to patch up the rough edges, and invest
effort in turning a correct release into a *great* release.

Are the foundation sponsoring a developer to write the 'design
of the Java Virtual Machine on FreeBSD handbook', so as to allow
rapid scaling of the number of brains working on this and future
ports?

Is the precious time of (erm, all 3?) specialist JVM/BSD porters
being wasted waiting for compiles that could be 0.5 as long by adding
an extra CPU?

If the foundation is employing some great developers, but they
announce the JVM as 'finished', will they be kept on retainer
until the next JDK release, or might some of them have to find
a job in the meantime, and not be able to come back to the JVM?

Is the foundation going to benchmark the JVM?  Get it certified?

FreeBSD can probably innovate in the area of getting Java apps
installed (Java hooks into pkg_db) once the Metadata JSR comes out.
Is this in the foundation's charter?

What about simply getting ports made for the *mass* of Java software
out there?

None of these issues or plans have been exposed to the public.


It's probably not the right forum to ask them, but these questions
seem important to me.  What's being done is great.  But more could
be done, perhaps.

cheers,
David.