[Sablevm-announce] SableVM 1.1.5 Released

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

The developers of the SableVM Project are proud to announce the
official release of SableVM 1.1.5.  SableVM is a liberally licensed
Free Java virtual machine.  See the "About SableVM" section below for
more informations about SableVM.

Here is a list of the most important changes and new features.  In
this version, we:

- Synchronized sablevm-classpath with the latest GNU Classpath CVS
   as of May 29, 2004.

- Improved the support for Ant 1.6.

- Switched to libtool handling to find the right library suffixes.
   This helps some platforms like OpenBSD and Cygwin.

- Fixed a corner case problem with class loading.

- Made some other small 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 and efficient
interpreter engine.  Its source code is very accessible and easy to
understand.  It also has many robustness features that have been the
object of careful design.

SableVM is a clean-room implementation of the publicly available
specifications.

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 (GPL) with a linking exception.

The license of SableVM (LGPL) was specifically chosen as to maximize
your ability to legally link and run popular applications, such as
Eclipse (http://eclipse.org) and Ant (http://ant.apache.org), which
are licensed in ways which might conflict with the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL).  See the the following link for more
information:

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

The SableVM web site is located at:

   http://sablevm.org


=== INSTALLATION ===

SableVM is available to download from the following locations:

- http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5523
- (alternate) http://devel.sablevm.org/download

You must download both:

- sablevm-1.1.5.tar.gz
- sablevm-classpath-1.1.5.tar.gz.

See the INSTALL file included in the sablevm-1.1.5.tar.gz archive for
build environment requirements and installation procedures.

We make frequent releases, but we also provide daily snapshots of our
"staging" development branch at:

   http://devel.sablevm.org/shot

Note that the code of the staging branch is more robust than the code
usually found in the CVS trunk of many other free software projects.
The staging branch only contains code that has been first tested by
developers within their own sandbox.  A detailed explanation of the
different development branches is available at:

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


=== NOTES ===

We appreciate your feedback.  Please feel invited to contact 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, irc.debian.org).


=== 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 normally migrate to the "testing"
distribution a few weeks later.

Other GNU/Linux distributions and other operating systems (*BSD, etc.)
might also provide binary packages.


=== DEVELOPMENT OF SABLEVM AND CLASSPATH ===

We invite you to visit our "Developer Portal" at:

   http://devel.sablevm.org/

This site contains the very latest news and other informations about
SableVM development.


For people who want to develop GNU Classpath in a comfortable
environment, we provide:

* Subversion accounts

   We provide accounts in our Subversion repository for developers who
   want to comfortably hack on GNU Classpath.  If you want to join,
   simply send your desired nickname and the *public* part of your SSH2
   DSA key from your ~/.ssh/ to
   sab...@li....

   Subversion is an improved CVS than takes approximately 10 minutes to
   learn for a person familiar with CVS.

* Very frequent updates from GNU Classpath CVS

   The "staging" development branch of sablevm-classpath is
   synchronized with the GNU Classpath CVS trunk every few days.

   Note that the code in sablevm-classpath is almost identical to that
   of the GNU Classpath CVS trunk.  The differences are very small, and
   mostly restricted to a few virtual machine dependent core classes like
   java.lang.Class.

* Private sandbox for each developer

   Each developer is given full access to his own "sandbox" where he
   can have several private development branches (as they're nearly
   0-cost to create in Subversion).  So each developer's development
   doesn't interfere with other developers.  Each developer can also
   create private "tags" on any code in Subversion.  These tags are
   publicly available via the Web interface at:

   http://devel.sablevm.org/svn/developers/

* No paperwork required

   We accept contributions without asking for copyright assignment.  In
   other words, you are not required to go through the Free Software
   Foundation paperwork and waive your copyright.  We leave this
   decision to your discretion.  We do accept that developers assign
   the copyright on their contributions to the Free Software
   Foundation, if they are willing to do so.

   Our contribution policy is available at:

   http://devel.sablevm.org/svn/repository/sablevm/branches/staging/doc/contribution_policy.txt


=== Additional Information ===

You will find a wealth of additional information in SableVM's wiki
pages at:

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



=== CONCLUSION ===

We wish you great fun using SableVM.

Enjoy!


         The SableVM Project developers