Status of non-Hotspot VMs and Shark

[Andrew Hughes]

----- Original Message -----
> Hi Florian,
> 
> Mostly in complete agreement with Xerxes here,
> 
> On 24/09/12 10:03 AM, Xerxes Rånby wrote:
> > 2012-09-23 11:05, Florian Weimer skrev:
> >> What's the status of Shark, JamVM and Cocoa for OpenJDK 6 and 7?
> >>  Are
> >> they officially released/supported?  What about the zero port?
> >>
> >> I'm wondering which of these VMs should be part of the upcoming
> >> Debian
> >> stable release.
> >>
> > ### Zero
> > Zero is actively maintained and all around stable.
> > Zero includes an assembler optimized interpreter for ARM and a
> > thumb2 jit for armv7.
> > Zero + OpenJDK 6  Icedtea 1.11.4 = OK
> > Zero + OpenJDK 7  Icedtea 2.3.2 = OK
> At least as far as I know the asm jit for arm is not yet working in
> 2.3
> will be fixed after I get last bits of jsr 292 for zero pasted back
> together.
> > tested configure flags:
> > --enable-zero
> > and
> > --with-additional-vms=zero

As far as I'm aware, the ARM port is only present in the 2.1 branch.  This needs rectifying.

The supported way of building is with --enable-zero.

> >
> > ### Shark
> > Shark (zero+shark) is unmaintained and considered broken.
> > Do not package.
> 
> Long term goal but dead at the moment.
> >
> > ### JamVM
> > JamVM is actively maintained and all around stable.
> > JamVM + OpenJDK 6  Icedtea 1.11.4 = OK, a more stable upstream
> > release exist to be released with 1.12.
> > use this patch
> > http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea6/rev/fb1137cef484
> > to use the latest JamVM in combination with IcedTea6 1.11.x before
> > the next IcedTea 6 1.12 hits the streets.
> >
> > JamVM + OpenJDK 7  Icedtea 2.3.2 = OK
> > tested configure flags:
> > --enable-jamvm

--enable-jamvm is the support way of building.

Is the same JamVM used by 6, 7 & 8?

> > and
> > --with-additional-vms=jamvm
> > * This --with-additional-vms=jamvm combination require a SONAME
> > patch on top of JamVM.
> > This jamvm-avoid-version-soname.patch SONAME patch is currently
> > only in use by ubuntu.
> > http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/quantal/openjdk-7/quantal/revision/30#debian/patches/jamvm-avoid-version-soname.patch
> > Sent and waiting for review upstream.
> > http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=29763831
> >

Why is this patch not in IcedTea or JamVM itself?

> > ### CACAO
> > Cacao is actively maintained and stable in combination with OpenJDK
> > 6.
> > Cacao + OpenJDK 6  Icedtea 1.11.4 = OK
> > --enable-cacao
> > and
> > --with-additional-vms=cacao

Again, --enable-cacao is the supported way of building.

> > There is a new upstream cacao 1.6.0 release that should be merged
> > and used by IcedTea6.
> > http://www.cacaojvm.org/
> >

Is anyone working on this?

> > Cacao + OpenJDK 7  Icedtea 2.3.2 = unstable
> > The CACAO OpenJDK 7 port is immature, it can run HelloWorld and
> > some numerical simple benchmarks
> > but refuses to run real world applications that access file IO.
> > Do not package.
> >

Ok, should this also be upgraded to 1.6?  Are there CACAO bugs for these issues?

> > ### Avian
> > Avian is actively maintained and rapidly approaching stable.
> > Avian + OpenJDK 7  IcedTea 2.3.2 = OK
> > Avian is preferably built separately from src after the main
> > OpenJDK 7 build.
> > Avian is packaged in Ubuntu 12.10 and show great performance on
> > embeded devices.
> > Latest deb source and merge request:
> > https://code.launchpad.net/~xranby/ubuntu/quantal/avian/avian_0.6+20120924/+merge/126005
> > http://oss.readytalk.com/avian/
> >

This is the first I've heard of this.  Any reason support wasn't added to IcedTea?

> > Cheers
> > Xerxes
> Thanks Xerxes!
> 
> Cheers!
> Chris
> PS
> The definition of support I am using  here is
>     "mostly working will try to fix bugs on best effort basis".
> 
> --
> --
> --     Woda: "Java: write once, debug anywhere" Hong Zhang
>                       http://thehenrys.ca
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> 

Cheers,
-- 
Andrew :)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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