Re: [Sablevm-developer] Obsoleting sablevm-classpath NOW!

[Steven A. <au...@wa...>]

Stephen Crawley wrote:
> Skimming through the JVM spec, I haven't found where it states that all
> package-private classes in a package must live in the same ZIP file.
> 
> Could you point out for me where it says this?

I am curious about this too, Etienne.  Also, quoting from your 
original letter:

Etienne> a
Etienne> class outside glibj.zip (which, by the way, should be called 
libclasspath.jar)
Etienne> is in a *different* runtime package than any class withing 
this file,
Etienne> if one is to follow closely the JVM spec,

Did you mean to imply that public classes in the same package must 
come from the same .jar file?

I want to know about this possible requirement since, if it is a 
requirement, someone will need to bring Jikes RVM into conformance.  I 
just did some browsing through the Sun 1.4.2 API docs and the closest 
thing I could find was the notion of sealing a package so that classes 
in it may be loaded only from a particular URL.

[...]
Etienne>I really do not see various VMs sharing the same Classpath 
installation;
Etienne>ther would be just too much possible problems.
> 
> I don't see these problems.  In fact, from what I've heard from others,
> I'm pretty sure that Jikes RVM, JC and Kissme could happily coexist with
> a single Classpath development sandbox and a single install directory
> containing one copy of glibj.jar and the Classpath native libraries.

That is my understanding as well.  It would just be a matter of 
telling the VM to load classes out of the shared Classpath install 
directory.  (Of course, the VM-specific classes, including the whole 
com.ibm.JikesRVM.* tree, would still be first in that search path.)

-- 
Steven Augart

Jikes RVM, open source Research Virtual Machine:
http://oss.software.ibm.com/jikesrvm

Office: +1 914/784-6743
T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM