xmlvm-users

[xmlvm-users] Support for J2ME (MIDP) to IPhone cross compilation, commercial usage, Apple AppStore?

[Gergely K. <ger...@ma...>]

Hi,

I found your very nice project.

We are looking into a solution to port our J2ME / BlackBerry / Android
application over to IPhone.
For Android we have a thin wrapper to provide the necessary J2ME services.
We use the following features:
- JSR-135 (Multimedia)
- JSR-170 (PIM, Filesystem access)
- Generic Connector Framework
- RecordStore
- Canvas

We plan to contribute the missing pieces of these features to the xmlvm
project. Does this kind of contribution enough to get a GPL Linking
Exception?
We have not decided yet whether we will start the J2ME MIDP support "from
scratch", or just add the missing pieces to the android2iphone library, and
use our Android port as the basis.

We would be also interested in the price of the commercial license. Our
clients might feel safer to be able to have an actual contract which grants
them the right to use the xmlvm runtime libraries.

A very important question, before we invest too much energy into this: Are
there applications already in the Apple App Store that were ported using
xmlvm? Could we get some pointers? Are there any issues that we have to
check?

Best Regards,
Gergely Kis
MattaKis Consulting

Re: [xmlvm-users] Support for J2ME (MIDP) to IPhone cross compilation, commercial usage, Apple AppStore?

[Arno P. <ar...@pu...>]

Gergely,

thank you for your interest in XMLVM. The contribution you mentioned is 
surely enough to grant you a linking exception. We focus on Android and 
iPhone, so we would prefer a contribution to the android2iphone part of 
XMLVM. I personally also believe that this is the cleaner approach.

As with any open source project, I don't know who is using XMLVM. I do 
not know of any application using XMLVM that is currently in the 
AppStore. However, I know of several applications that have been 
submitted to the AppStore for review (including our own Xokoban game). I 
will send a short message over this mailing list if I hear of any XMLVM 
success stories.

We currently do not have a commercial license. At this point the XMLVM 
core team only consists of 'geeks'. We are not opposed to offer a 
commercial license. Before we talk about money, we would need to know 
what your expectations are. One thing we can offer in return for a 
commercial license is to prioritize TODOs based on your needs. But 
perhaps you first mention more clearly what your expectations are.

Arno


Gergely Kis wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I found your very nice project.
> 
> We are looking into a solution to port our J2ME / BlackBerry / Android 
> application over to IPhone.
> For Android we have a thin wrapper to provide the necessary J2ME 
> services. We use the following features:
> - JSR-135 (Multimedia)
> - JSR-170 (PIM, Filesystem access)
> - Generic Connector Framework
> - RecordStore
> - Canvas
> 
> We plan to contribute the missing pieces of these features to the xmlvm 
> project. Does this kind of contribution enough to get a GPL Linking 
> Exception?
> We have not decided yet whether we will start the J2ME MIDP support 
> "from scratch", or just add the missing pieces to the android2iphone 
> library, and use our Android port as the basis.
> 
> We would be also interested in the price of the commercial license. Our 
> clients might feel safer to be able to have an actual contract which 
> grants them the right to use the xmlvm runtime libraries.
> 
> A very important question, before we invest too much energy into this: 
> Are there applications already in the Apple App Store that were ported 
> using xmlvm? Could we get some pointers? Are there any issues that we 
> have to check?
> 
> Best Regards,
> Gergely Kis
> MattaKis Consulting
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day 
> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on 
> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with 
> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> xmlvm-users mailing list
> xml...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users

Re: [xmlvm-users] Support for J2ME (MIDP) to IPhone cross compilation, commercial usage, Apple AppStore?

[Gergely K. <ger...@ma...>]

Arno,

thank you for your prompt reply. Yes, we will most likely concentrate on
extending the android2iphone library.

I have to admit, I know less about the Apple AppStore submission process
than I would like. What does "submission for review" mean? Is this some kind
of dry run, where Apple checks if the submitted application complies to the
submission guidelines? Did Xokoban pass? :)

Regarding the commercial license: I just saw it mentioned in one of the
replies on the list, so I thought I would ask if there was already an
established commercial licensing model.
It is my experience that some of my clients are more comfortable spending on
a license so that they have an invoice and a contract filed away. However,
most clients will do OK with an open source licensed component, as long as
they don't have to release their own source.

So just to clarify: If we, as a company receive the "linking exception"
license in exchange for our contribution, are we allowed to develop
commercial applications for our clients, so that our clients would release
these applications to the public (basically "work made for hire")? Also:
would there be some kind of "expiration date" on this linking exception
license, or it would apply to all future revisions of xmlvm?

Now back to the interesting stuff:
One important issue in any embedded development scenario is the on device
debugging. It would be nice to provide a way for Java applications
translated by xmlvm to be debugged on the IPhone.

One solution comes to mind: Create a protocol bridge between the debugging
protocol used by the IPhone (I think they use GDB/MI, but I have to check
further), and Eclipse, which uses the standard Java debugger interface. As
part of the translation process xmlvm could output a mapping file which maps
the source line information in the class files to source line information in
the Objective-C sources.

The big IF in this approach is of course whether an external program outside
of Xcode can access the GDB/MI connection to the IPhone. I have seen some
indication on the net that this can be done.

What do you think?

Best Regards,
Gergely

2009/7/31 Arno Puder <ar...@pu...>

>
> Gergely,
>
> thank you for your interest in XMLVM. The contribution you mentioned is
> surely enough to grant you a linking exception. We focus on Android and
> iPhone, so we would prefer a contribution to the android2iphone part of
> XMLVM. I personally also believe that this is the cleaner approach.
>
> As with any open source project, I don't know who is using XMLVM. I do
> not know of any application using XMLVM that is currently in the
> AppStore. However, I know of several applications that have been
> submitted to the AppStore for review (including our own Xokoban game). I
> will send a short message over this mailing list if I hear of any XMLVM
> success stories.
>
> We currently do not have a commercial license. At this point the XMLVM
> core team only consists of 'geeks'. We are not opposed to offer a
> commercial license. Before we talk about money, we would need to know
> what your expectations are. One thing we can offer in return for a
> commercial license is to prioritize TODOs based on your needs. But
> perhaps you first mention more clearly what your expectations are.
>
> Arno
>
>
> Gergely Kis wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I found your very nice project.
> >
> > We are looking into a solution to port our J2ME / BlackBerry / Android
> > application over to IPhone.
> > For Android we have a thin wrapper to provide the necessary J2ME
> > services. We use the following features:
> > - JSR-135 (Multimedia)
> > - JSR-170 (PIM, Filesystem access)
> > - Generic Connector Framework
> > - RecordStore
> > - Canvas
> >
> > We plan to contribute the missing pieces of these features to the xmlvm
> > project. Does this kind of contribution enough to get a GPL Linking
> > Exception?
> > We have not decided yet whether we will start the J2ME MIDP support
> > "from scratch", or just add the missing pieces to the android2iphone
> > library, and use our Android port as the basis.
> >
> > We would be also interested in the price of the commercial license. Our
> > clients might feel safer to be able to have an actual contract which
> > grants them the right to use the xmlvm runtime libraries.
> >
> > A very important question, before we invest too much energy into this:
> > Are there applications already in the Apple App Store that were ported
> > using xmlvm? Could we get some pointers? Are there any issues that we
> > have to check?
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > Gergely Kis
> > MattaKis Consulting
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008
> 30-Day
> > trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and
> focus on
> > what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with
> > Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmlvm-users mailing list
> > xml...@li...
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day
> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus
> on
> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with
> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
> _______________________________________________
> xmlvm-users mailing list
> xml...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users
>

Re: [xmlvm-users] Support for J2ME (MIDP) to IPhone cross compilation, commercial usage, Apple AppStore?

[Arno P. <ar...@pu...>]

Gergely,

> I have to admit, I know less about the Apple AppStore submission process 
> than I would like. What does "submission for review" mean? Is this some 
> kind of dry run, where Apple checks if the submitted application 
> complies to the submission guidelines? Did Xokoban pass? :)

Its really quite simple: Apple keeps in total control over which 
applications get accepted to the AppStore. You first have to submit your 
application (only the binary, not the source), Apple reviews it, and 
then they may or may not accept it to their AppStore. We have submitted 
Xokoban on July 1st for review; exactly a month ago and we are still 
waiting. Apple is not very consistent with its decisions. If you search 
the web, you will find plenty of such stories.

> So just to clarify: If we, as a company receive the "linking exception" 
> license in exchange for our contribution, are we allowed to develop 
> commercial applications for our clients, so that our clients would 
> release these applications to the public (basically "work made for 
> hire")? Also: would there be some kind of "expiration date" on this 
> linking exception license, or it would apply to all future revisions of 
> xmlvm?

The linking exception is granted to an individual or a company who makes 
the contribution to XMLVM. This linking exception is non-transferable. 
This means that you yourself can do work for hire for your clients 
without having to release your application under the GPL, but your 
client could not do the development work.

> Now back to the interesting stuff:
> One important issue in any embedded development scenario is the on 
> device debugging. It would be nice to provide a way for Java 
> applications translated by xmlvm to be debugged on the IPhone.

I agree that debugging capabilities are important. As long as there is a 
Java version of the Cocoa Touch classes, you can debug under Eclipse. If 
you want to debug on the device, you have to use Xcode. The big downside 
here is that you would be debugging the Objective-C source code that 
XMLVM generates. That is like debugging assembler code. It should be 
possible to insert meta-information (i.e., line numbers) into the 
generated Objective-C code and build a bridge to an external Java 
debugger. That is no easy task.

> One solution comes to mind: Create a protocol bridge between the 
> debugging protocol used by the IPhone (I think they use GDB/MI, but I 
> have to check further), and Eclipse, which uses the standard Java 
> debugger interface. As part of the translation process xmlvm could 
> output a mapping file which maps the source line information in the 
> class files to source line information in the Objective-C sources.

That's basically it. A first step would be to look at Java class files 
with debug information and map that debug information to XMLVM so it can 
be used during code generation. Generating debug info would have to be 
done in class ParseJVM by making use of BCEL. Patches are welcome. :-)

> The big IF in this approach is of course whether an external program 
> outside of Xcode can access the GDB/MI connection to the IPhone. I have 
> seen some indication on the net that this can be done.

Well, how about just doing a plain old TCP socket? Or simpler, just use 
HTTP to communicate with the device.

Arno

Re: [xmlvm-users] Support for J2ME (MIDP) to IPhone cross compilation, commercial usage, Apple AppStore?

[Björn C. <bj...@ca...>]

Hi!
I have also been thinking of contributing to JavaME to iPhone porting.
My idea is to create JavaME libraries for the phone and then use the 
XMLVM to convert the code.
This is probably not what Gergely was thinking of.
Also there is not subproject for what I am thinking of. Is is possible 
to start a new one?

/Björn

Gergely Kis skrev:
> Hi,
>
> I found your very nice project.
>
> We are looking into a solution to port our J2ME / BlackBerry / Android 
> application over to IPhone.
> For Android we have a thin wrapper to provide the necessary J2ME 
> services. We use the following features:
> - JSR-135 (Multimedia)
> - JSR-170 (PIM, Filesystem access)
> - Generic Connector Framework
> - RecordStore
> - Canvas
>
> We plan to contribute the missing pieces of these features to the 
> xmlvm project. Does this kind of contribution enough to get a GPL 
> Linking Exception?
> We have not decided yet whether we will start the J2ME MIDP support 
> "from scratch", or just add the missing pieces to the android2iphone 
> library, and use our Android port as the basis.
>
> We would be also interested in the price of the commercial license. 
> Our clients might feel safer to be able to have an actual contract 
> which grants them the right to use the xmlvm runtime libraries.
>
> A very important question, before we invest too much energy into this: 
> Are there applications already in the Apple App Store that were ported 
> using xmlvm? Could we get some pointers? Are there any issues that we 
> have to check?
>
> Best Regards,
> Gergely Kis
> MattaKis Consulting
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day 
> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on 
> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with 
> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmlvm-users mailing list
> xml...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users
>   

Re: [xmlvm-users] Support for J2ME (MIDP) to IPhone cross compilation, commercial usage, Apple AppStore?

[Arno P. <ar...@pu...>]

Björn,

we at XMLVM have no big interest in JavaME, but of course you are free 
to work on this and we would also integrate your stuff to our code base. 
If I can just make one suggestion: do it in a similar way as we do for 
the android2iphone part: first expose the Cocoa Touch API that you need 
in Java and then write a compatibility layer for Java ME on top that 
only makes use of this Cocoa Touch Java API. This way the Java for the 
iPhone portion of XMLVM will benefit as well.

Arno


Björn Caroll wrote:
> Hi!
> I have also been thinking of contributing to JavaME to iPhone porting.
> My idea is to create JavaME libraries for the phone and then use the 
> XMLVM to convert the code.
> This is probably not what Gergely was thinking of.
> Also there is not subproject for what I am thinking of. Is is possible 
> to start a new one?
> 
> /Björn
> 
> Gergely Kis skrev:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I found your very nice project.
>>
>> We are looking into a solution to port our J2ME / BlackBerry / Android 
>> application over to IPhone.
>> For Android we have a thin wrapper to provide the necessary J2ME 
>> services. We use the following features:
>> - JSR-135 (Multimedia)
>> - JSR-170 (PIM, Filesystem access)
>> - Generic Connector Framework
>> - RecordStore
>> - Canvas
>>
>> We plan to contribute the missing pieces of these features to the 
>> xmlvm project. Does this kind of contribution enough to get a GPL 
>> Linking Exception?
>> We have not decided yet whether we will start the J2ME MIDP support 
>> "from scratch", or just add the missing pieces to the android2iphone 
>> library, and use our Android port as the basis.
>>
>> We would be also interested in the price of the commercial license. 
>> Our clients might feel safer to be able to have an actual contract 
>> which grants them the right to use the xmlvm runtime libraries.
>>
>> A very important question, before we invest too much energy into this: 
>> Are there applications already in the Apple App Store that were ported 
>> using xmlvm? Could we get some pointers? Are there any issues that we 
>> have to check?
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Gergely Kis
>> MattaKis Consulting
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day 
>> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on 
>> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with 
>> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmlvm-users mailing list
>> xml...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users
>>   
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day 
> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on 
> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with 
> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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> xmlvm-users mailing list
> xml...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users

[xmlvm-users] Changing the method naming?

[Björn C. <bj...@ca...>]

That's the beauty of os. Everybody can work on what's interests them.
Hopefully someone else has interest in it amd will help me since I don't
think I can complete it on my own.

When I started thinking about this I saw that you had developed Java
api's for the iPhone but the problem that I saw was that you also had to
develop objective c counterpart for every class. This is to translate
from the name+param-type methodnames, you have to use to handle
polymorphism. Coming from JavaME I am used to keep the size of the
binary down and to double every compatibility class does not seem right.

Could this naming problem be solved? I was thinking that maybe there
could be a parameter that tells XMLVM to not add type to the method name
when calling a specified package. In the case of iPhone libraries it
would be the default package since Objective C does not have packages.
What do you think of that idea?

/Björn

Arno Puder skrev:
> Björn,
>
> we at XMLVM have no big interest in JavaME, but of course you are free 
> to work on this and we would also integrate your stuff to our code base. 
> If I can just make one suggestion: do it in a similar way as we do for 
> the android2iphone part: first expose the Cocoa Touch API that you need 
> in Java and then write a compatibility layer for Java ME on top that 
> only makes use of this Cocoa Touch Java API. This way the Java for the 
> iPhone portion of XMLVM will benefit as well.
>
> Arno
>
>
> Björn Caroll wrote:
>   
>> Hi!
>> I have also been thinking of contributing to JavaME to iPhone porting.
>> My idea is to create JavaME libraries for the phone and then use the 
>> XMLVM to convert the code.
>> This is probably not what Gergely was thinking of.
>> Also there is not subproject for what I am thinking of. Is is possible 
>> to start a new one?
>>
>> /Björn
>>
>> Gergely Kis skrev:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I found your very nice project.
>>>
>>> We are looking into a solution to port our J2ME / BlackBerry / Android 
>>> application over to IPhone.
>>> For Android we have a thin wrapper to provide the necessary J2ME 
>>> services. We use the following features:
>>> - JSR-135 (Multimedia)
>>> - JSR-170 (PIM, Filesystem access)
>>> - Generic Connector Framework
>>> - RecordStore
>>> - Canvas
>>>
>>> We plan to contribute the missing pieces of these features to the 
>>> xmlvm project. Does this kind of contribution enough to get a GPL 
>>> Linking Exception?
>>> We have not decided yet whether we will start the J2ME MIDP support 
>>> "from scratch", or just add the missing pieces to the android2iphone 
>>> library, and use our Android port as the basis.
>>>
>>> We would be also interested in the price of the commercial license. 
>>> Our clients might feel safer to be able to have an actual contract 
>>> which grants them the right to use the xmlvm runtime libraries.
>>>
>>> A very important question, before we invest too much energy into this: 
>>> Are there applications already in the Apple App Store that were ported 
>>> using xmlvm? Could we get some pointers? Are there any issues that we 
>>> have to check?
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>> Gergely Kis
>>> MattaKis Consulting
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day 
>>> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on 
>>> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with 
>>> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> xmlvm-users mailing list
>>> xml...@li...
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users
>>>   
>>>       
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day 
>> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on 
>> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with 
>> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmlvm-users mailing list
>> xml...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users
>>     
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day 
> trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on 
> what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with 
> Crystal Reports now.  http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july
> _______________________________________________
> xmlvm-users mailing list
> xml...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlvm-users
>   

Re: [xmlvm-users] Changing the method naming?

[Arno P. <ar...@pu...>]

Björn Caroll wrote:
> When I started thinking about this I saw that you had developed Java 
> api's for the iPhone but the problem that I saw was that you also had to 
> develop objective c counterpart for every class. This is to translate 
> from the name+param-type methodnames, you have to use to handle 
> polymorphism. Coming from JavaME I am used to keep the size of the 
> binary down and to double every compatibility class does not seem right.
> 
> Could this naming problem be solved? I was thinking that maybe there 
> could be a parameter that tells XMLVM to not add type to the method name 
> when calling a specified package. In the case of iPhone libraries it 
> would be the default package since Objective C does not have packages. 
> What do you think of that idea?

XMLVM uses categories to extend existing Cocoa classes, so the overhead 
is minimal. In many cases it is not just a matter of delegating the 
method call in the wrapper, but there is a little more that has to be 
done (for example garbage collection or mapping from value types to 
objects).

Arno