[Sablevm-announce] SableVM 1.1.4 Released

[Etienne G. <gag...@uq...>]

The developers of the SableVM Project are proud to announce the
official release of SableVM 1.1.4.  SableVM is a liberally licensed
Free Java Virtual Machine.  See the "About SableVM" section below for
more informations about SableVM.

The most important changes and features of the 1.1.4 version include:

- Updated sablevm-classpath is with the recent GNU Classpath 0.09
   release with later GNU Classpath CVS changes as of May 4, 2004.

- Improved support for AWT and Swing.

- Eliminated the dependency lt_dlopen(NULL) which seem broken on some
   platforms such as Cygwin and some *BSD.

- Switched to new, complete implementation of VMProcess/Process from
   GNU Classpath instead of using our own previous partial
   implementation.

- Added x86_64 (AMD64) support to the already supported 8 other
   architectures of Debian GNU/Linux (alpha, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k,
   powerpc, s390, sparc).  The support for the remaining mips and
   mipsel architectures of Debian is apparently implemented but it has
   not yet been confirmed.

- Improved autodetection of build parameters on non-GNU/Linux systems.
   This includes selection of dynamic libraries, availability of m4
   preprocessor and auto-disabling "signals for exceptions" on
   platforms that don't seem to support signals.

- Made sure that the m4 preprocessor will not be needed to build from
   sablevm-*.tar.gz distribution files.  m4 is only required to build
   directly from a snapshot of the Subversion repository.

- Updated and improved manual pages.

- Made some other little improvements and applied a few bug fixes.


=== ABOUT SABLEVM ===

SableVM is a robust, extremely portable, efficient, and
specifications-compliant Java Virtual Machine that aims to be easy to
maintain and to extend. It features a state-of-the-art, efficient
interpreter engine.  Its source code is very accessible and easy to
understand, and has many robustness features that have been the object
of careful design.

SableVM is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License (LGPL).  It also uses a modified version of GNU Classpath
called sablevm-classpath which is licensed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License with a linking exception.

See http://www.sablevm.org/ for more details.

=== INSTALLATION ===

SableVM is available to download from:

   http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5523&release_id=238633

You must download both:

- sablevm-1.1.4.tar.gz
- sablevm-classpath-1.1.4.tar.gz.

See the INSTALL file included in the sablevm-1.1.4.tar.gz archive
for build environment requirements and installation procedures.

We plan to make frequent releases, but please note that we also have
daily snapshots of our "staging" development tree readily available
at:

   http://devel.sablevm.org/shot

Note that the "staging" code is much more robust than the usual CVS
trunk of many other free software projects.  The "staging" tree only
contains code that has been first tested by developers within their
own "sandbox" development tree.  See the following for details:

   http://devel.sablevm.org/wiki/DevelopmentBranches


=== NOTES ===

We appreciate your feedback.  Please feel invited to mail us. See:

   http://devel.sablevm.org/wiki/MailingLists

You can also join us in real-time on the #sablevm IRC channel on
irc.sablevm.org (alias: irc.freenode.net).


=== BINARY PACKAGES ===

Binary packages of new SableVM versions are usually available in the
GNU/Linux Debian "unstable" distribution shortly after the official
release.  These packages should migrate to the "testing" distribution
in a few weeks.

We are looking for people willing to package SableVM for other
GNU/Linux distributions (and operating systems).  We have a
preliminary sablevm.spec (for the RPM package manager).  We would
really like to get LSB-compatible RPM packages.  Such packages could
be built on a Debian system (with the help of LSB development
packages).  If you are interested to get involved, we will be glad to
help you.


=== CONCLUSION ===

We wish you great fun using SableVM.

Enjoy!


         The SableVM Project developers