Re: [Sablevm-user] Greetings!

[Etienne M. G. <eg...@j-...>]

Brent Fulgham wrote:
> Well, and that's really the downside.  As a language base, the VM would
> be fine I suppose even if it had some non-standard bytecodes defined.
> However, the infrastructure required to implement closures might provide
> some separate benefit for Java itself (perhaps through providing a more
> efficient means of handling certain functions).  But this is not based
> on anything more than my musings right now.

It is worth trying.  If there's something I have learned, it is that you
don't really know before you have tried something.  Sometimes, you get
unexpected results (which can be good or bad news:-).

> >
> Fine.  I won't be able to do much for the time being anyway.  I'm trying
> to make my way through a bunch of reference material I've accumulated
> recently and I want to get that done soon.  I'm actually looking forward
> to reading the VM code you've produced as a learning experience.
> 
> As I said, VM hacking is not my forte (yet), but implementing some sablepath
> classes and native glue should be doable.  It should make for some nice small
> bits that could be implemented piece by piece.  Let me know what you are
> thinking regarding what sequence things should be done in, etc.

In fact, you can simply export CFLAG='-Werror -O0 -ggdb' then try to
"make clean; make" sablepath.  You will discover that there are many
warnings.  Many of these seem suspicious, and there is certainly some
way of writing the code such that no warning is issued (other than
turning off warning options;-).  This could be a starting point, if you
like.  Mainly, you can look at *.c files under sablepath's native/
directory and fix any problem you find.

You should probably find the book "The Java Native Interface", ISBN
0-201-32577-2.  It is the definitive reference for the JNI.  It also
contains programming tips and tells you about pitfalls.  Interesting
reading.

> Oh, I have a Sourceforge login, by the way, "bfulgham", in case you
> wanted to add me to the project at some point.

Done.

Have fun!

Etienne
-- 
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Etienne M. Gagnon, M.Sc.                     e-mail: eg...@j-...
Author of SableVM:                             http://www.sablevm.org/
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