newbie startup question

[Raffaello Giulietti]

Christian Thalinger wrote:
> Raffaello Giulietti wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'd like to start playing with da Vinci, in particular with the java.dyn
>> classes (InvokeDynamic, CallSite, MethodHandle, etc.)
>>
>> They seem to be included in the more recent "Java Platform, Standard
>> Edition 7 Binary Snapshot Releases" found at
>> http://download.java.net/jdk7/binaries/. So I'm wondering if they are
>> complete enough and usable or if I shall build Da Vinci from the
>> Mercurial repos.
> 
> Yes, current builds have JSR 292 support, although it's not complete.

I just successfully compiled and ran a tiny program with one
InvokeDynamic call site and the bootstrap method. I did the build in
NetBeans but had to execute the program on the command line. Running
inside NetBeans doesn't work right, probably because NB sees confusing
errors in the source.

> One major point is that there is no compiler support and you have to run
> your programs with the interpreter (-Xint).  This, plus some other
> fixes, has been fixed in the mlvm repository.
> 

I guess you mean JIT compiler support, not javac.

Seems to work even without -Xint (but, of course, not without
-XX:+EnableInvokeDynamic). What are the problems that -Xint is supposed
to circumvent?


> Building is not easy, that's right, so it depends on what you want to
> play with.  I'd say, give a binary snapshot a try and if you run into
> problems, build it yourself.  I'd be glad to help you with that.
> 

Christian, I hope to be able to bother neither you nor any other
subscriber, but I still would like to thank you in advance for your help.

Raffaello