Restarted Java translation of Udanax-Gold source

Since the Christmas holidays I have put the Dolphin demo aside and continued with an earlier work of translating the Udanax-Gold Smalltalk source into Java. Depending on how this goes over the next few weeks, I am hoping to either use this as a base for a new version of the Abora server, or attempt to import the Coordinate Space and Ent features into a Java version of my previous Dolphin server.

The translation is working from Udanax-Gold source code gained from a few sources; Typed Smalltalk directly from XOC and via Les Tyrell plus some of the C++ code from Jeff Rush's CVS server. Even with this patchwork of sources, I am still misses a number of classes. I have a home grown translator that converts the Smalltalk into approximate Java, to which I am gradually adding knowledge of the Gold programming techniques. Even with the translator I am expecting a lot of manual work will be required to finish off a first pass with minimal compilation problems. The C++ code I am copying and hand tweaking. I will be creating JUnit tests as I start investigating the resulting code.

At the time of writing there are still 5000+ compilation problems so it's too early for others to productively work with. If you are still interested all the source is available under CVS, the JavaTranslator and Gold projects.