Re: VMInterface addition: Make native library names part of VMInterface

[Bryce McKinlay]

On Oct 26, 2003, at 6:43 AM, Dalibor Topic wrote:

> One of the things I keep stumbling over whenever I merge code from 
> Classpath into Kaffe is the different native library names. Would it 
> be possible to separate those out into their own VMInterface class and 
> use references instead?
>
> I'd prefer something like
>
> System.loadLibrary(VMNativeLibraries.IO);

How about having less native libraries? Does it really make sense to 
have, for example, separate native libs for java.net, java.io, and 
java.nio? I think these ones at least should be merged into one 
library, which is loaded unconditionally at startup. After all, 
virtually all desktop java apps use some kind of I/O.

This way we can get rid of the static initializer System.loadLibrary() 
calls all over the place, something that could be prone to bugs if 
someone forgets to include one somewhere. It would simplify the number 
of files needed to "deploy" classpath, make for less places that VM 
implementors need to customize, and probably improve performance as 
System.loadLibrary can be slowish.

The AWT libs, however, should probably remain separate due to the 
existence of multiple toolkits and such.

Regards

Bryce.