<AWT Dev> RFR [9] Modular Source Code

Phil Race philip.race at oracle.com
Tue Aug 19 23:09:09 UTC 2014


On a related note I am scratching my head about why some files
destined to be compiled into libawt or libawt_xawt go into a directory
called 'common'.
Eg OpenGL sources are in common but aren't common to all libs
or even to all awt libs, since they would go into libawt on windows
and libawt_xawt on unix and not at all into libawt_headless.

'common 'might (guessing here)  have started out as place to put interface
header files shared between libs but maybe got adopted for other uses ?

-phil.



On 08/18/2014 07:15 AM, Anthony Petrov wrote:
> On 8/18/2014 5:47 PM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
>> libawt et al:
>>    The relation between libawt, libawt_headless, libjawt, libawt_xawt
>> and libawt_lwawt are hairy enough to make my brain curl up. I believe
>> there are simplifications to be made but I gave up trying to figure them
>> out.
>
> libawt contains code that is shared between all AWT lib 
> implementations. Depending on what mode/toolkit is requested, it loads 
> a specific variant of the awt native library, such as:
>
>  - libawt_headless - headless AWT implementation.
>  - libawt_xawt - XToolkit implementation (uses X11 for GUI)
>  - libawt_lwawt - CToolkit implementation (uses Cocoa for GUI)
>
> Historically, we were able to choose between lwawt and xawt on Mac in 
> the past, but we no longer support or even build xawt on Mac. Also, in 
> the past there was MToolkit (which used Motif for GUI). Again, we no 
> longer support this toolkit. So, currently we always use xawt on 
> Linux/Solaris and lwawt on Mac. But since we still need to choose 
> between a real toolkit and a headless toolkit, we need the common 
> libawt library.
>
> libjawt is a helper library that implements JAWT API and is loaded by 
> applications that use the JAWT interface which allows them to get 
> direct access to the native AWT drawing surface and use native APIs 
> (e.g. OpenGL) to draw on the surface. This library isn't needed for 
> regular AWT/Swing applications.
>
> So I'm not sure if the current set of AWT libraries could be 
> simplified any further.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> -- 
> best regards,
> Anthony



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