JamVM

File Release Notes and Changelog

Release Name: JamVM 1.3.2

Notes:
JamVM 1.3.2 is a minor feature/bug-fix release.

Changes:
A summary of changes since 1.3.1:

- Updated to be compatible with Classpath-0.17 and Classpath from
  CVS (as of 28th July).

- Shutdown hooks are now ran on VM termination, either normally, or via user
  interruption (i.e ctrl-C).

- Revised GC allocation failure policy
    - Using a simple heuristic the GC attempts to maintain at least 25% heap
      free.  If it fails the heap is expanded, regardless of whether the
      allocation request could be satisfied.  This reduces frequent garbage
      collection cycles when GC returns only a limited amount of memory.

- Revised Object finalization
    - during GC a thread could deadlock waiting for finalization.  This
      occurred when a finalizer (running in the finalizer thread) attempted
      to grab a lock the thread is holding.

    - a minor bug fix where finalized objects waiting for the finalizer to 
      be ran could keep alive other finalized objects (if it had the only
      reference to it).

    - a minor bug fix where objects waiting for finalization could be lost
      (i.e. finalize() method not called).  This only happened when >1000
      objects were outstanding.

    - VMRuntime.runFinalization() implemented.  This enables a thread to force
      finalization.

- In certain circumstances a class loader would be unmarked during GC,
  enabling it to be collected.  This resulted in a SEGV.

- JNI FindClass now uses the current class loader, not the first non-null on
  the stack.

- VMClass.getModifiers() now handles inner class attributes.

- Fix to enable build directory to be different to source directory (this was
  broken in 1.3.0).