Improving the documention of the JVM implementation interface

[Krystal Mok]

Hi Steve,

There's been some efforts in this area before. There's an OpenJDK project
called "Common VM Interface" [1], ran by Dr Andrew John Hughes. One of the
earlier notes can be found at [2]. The aims of this project seems to be in
the same direction as what you're looking for.

Xi Yang has been working on integrating OpenJDK class libraries into Jikes
RVM this year. This work also needed a definition of the VM interface in
OpenJDK. He's made quite a lot of progress already, so he might be able to
help out with this documentation proposal. I'm cc'ing this mail to him.

- Kris

[1]: http://openjdk.java.net/projects/cvmi/
[2]: http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/cvmi-dev/2008-July/000006.html

On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:29 PM, Steve Poole <spoole at linux.vnet.ibm.com>wrote:

> Hi all,  I've been talking to Mikael Vidstedt and a few other Oracle
> luminaries about improving the documentation of the  interface between
> the JVM and the rest of the SDK.
>
> We wanted to make that discussion public hence this post.  I'll start
> and Mikael can jump in.
>
> What I'm trying to do is simply gain some agreement on what code is JVM
> implementation specific and what isn't.  Then, where this JVM
> implementation specific code interacts with the SDK, improve the
> documentation.
>
> A few examples to consider...
>
> JVM_* entry points in the VM that are there for the class library code
> to call: these are not part of the public JNI spec - I'd like to get
> them documented in more detail.
>
> These extra entry points can blur the line between the JVM and the class
> libraries: sometimes making  it's difficult to work out if the "real"
> API is the C entry point or the calling Java class. To put it another
> way  - there is Java code that is intentionally JVM implementation
> specific.   I'd like to get that status documented.
>
> Another similar example is where Hotspot code leaks out of the JVM into
> the class libs and tools.   The Late Attach API is a good (or is that
> bad) example. Sometimes it's difficult to work out if that leakage is
> intentional or inadvertent.  I'd like to get that status documented too.
>
> So to recap:  what I'd like to do is discover and document the API
> between the JVM implementation specific code and everything else.
> Hopefully in the process improving everyone's awareness and getting some
> common agreement over actual behaviour or design versus intention.  This
> work might discover areas that could benefit from improved interface
> design and some form of  refactoring but that would be for later.
>
>
> Thanks
>
> Steve
>
>
>
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