[Jikesrvm-announce] Jikes RVM 2.2.0 now available

[David P G. <gr...@us...>]

Jikes RVM 2.2.0 is now available from the developerworks web site
(http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/jikesrvm). The release notes are
appended below.

We would like to take this opportunity to encourage people to contribute to
the growth of the Jikes RVM community.  There are a number of ways in which
you can help
(http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/jikesrvm/info/howtohelp.shtml).


Highlights of this release include:
  + Jikes RVM now mostly uses the GNU Classpath class libraries. All
library packages except java.lang, java.lang.ref, java.lang.reflect,
java.io, java.net,  and java.util are from Classpath. We are optimistic
that release 2.2.1 of Jikes RVM will be based entirely on the GNU Classpath
libraries.
  + The introduction of JMTk (Java Memory management Tool kit).
  + Numerous extensions and bug fixes to core VM functionality to support
running a wider range of applications.
  + Support for gathering and exploiting dynamic branch probabilities for
conditional and multi-way branches.
  + Introduction of packages in the Jikes RVM source code.
  + A bytecode verifier contributed by L. Zhang (UCSB)
  + Support for Intel cycle counter contributed by  H. Lee and J. Palm
(Colorado)
  + Support for PowerPC hardware performance counters on AIX 5.

Other notes:
  + As announced in the 2.1.1 release notes support for
VM_Magic.pragmaInline and VM_Magic.pragmaNoInline has been removed.  Code
must use the exception-based  pragma mechanism.
  + jdp is no longer supported. See the userguide for details.
  + We anticipate moving completely to JMTk and removing support for the
watson collectors in a future release of Jikes RVM. This may happen as soon
as the 2.2.1 release depending on JMTk performance and stability.

A large number of other miscellaneous bugs in version 2.1.1 are fixed in
the 2.2.0 release.  See the developerWorks bug tracking software tool and
CVS history for details.