RE: Thoughts on 'reference classes'

[Jeroen Frijters]

Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Note that there also just is the Not Enough Time thing... :{

Well understood.

> > * The use of native code should be limited. Preferrably to primitive
> > operations that cannot be performed from within Java
> 
> What do you exactly mean when you say native code here? Do 
> you mean the
> use of JNI code? Or just VM specific interface code?. I don't think we
> should restrict it to much.
> 
> I believe that if something cannot be done in Java, but can be done
> through JNI (+POSIX) then GNU Classpath should provide a native
> (reference) implementation.

I didn't mean to imply that GNU Classpath shouldn't provide a native
implementation, just that the native methods should be as small as
possible (i.e. real primitives that can be used as building blocks for
more complex operations).

> Also when something can be done in java, but there is an 
> possibility for
> the VM to do something more efficient (like for example the
> getCurrentClass(Loader) methods) then they should be moved into the VM
> interface code (with a default java implementation so VM implementers
> don't have to implement them "natively" if they don't want to).

Absolutely. When you have JNI mechanism that is slow, it may be
worthwhile to move more stuff to native, but I don't that should be the
default.

> BTW. Are you going to point people to the latest Mono 0.20 
> release notes anytime soon? You really should shout this
> from the highest roof you can find. Hint, hint...

Despite what the release notes say, we're not just yet at a point where
it works. We're getting there pretty quickly though. My lameness in
makefile department isn't really helping though ;-) I still haven't
gotten around to getting Mono to build on my system.

> P.S Why the HTML email with font size=tiny?
> Did someone complain that they couldn't read the plain text version?

Yeah, sorry about that. I recently switched to using an MS Exchange 2003
server with Outlook 2003 (both beta versions) and I haven't been able to
figure out what causes that. I'm sending plain text mails, but the mail
header contains a MIME-Version and Content-Type header and I'm guessing
that the listserv software generates the HTML based on that.

Regards,
Jeroen