SableVM 1.11 Released

[Grzegorz B. Prokopski]

The developers of the SableVM Project are proud to announce the
official release of SableVM 1.11.  SableVM is a liberally licensed Free
Java virtual machine.  See the "About SableVM" section below for more
informations about SableVM.

Here is a list of the most important changes and new features.  In
this version, we:

- Fixed many important bugs of version 1.1.10.
- Imported GNU Classpath CVS snapshot as of March 12, 2005.
- Added debugging traces on assertion failures in stop/resume java
   transitions, and fixed revealed bugs.
- Added assertions to check that the env pointer is valid in JNI
   calls.
- Implemented non-blocking locking, and used it to solve a hashcode
   bug.
- Solved many subtle bugs resulting in incompletely initialized
   threads and stack corruption.
- Cleaned up suspend/resume code.
- Fixed various other minor bugs.
- Added javac-sablevm wrapper for jikes and javac in java home dirs.
- Added creation of rt.jar symlink to libclasspath.jar.
- Transformed the staging development branch into the development
   trunk, and used new release numbering scheme.


=== ABOUT SABLEVM ===

SableVM is a robust, extremely portable, efficient, and
specifications-compliant Java Virtual Machine that aims to be easy to
maintain and to extend.  It features a state-of-the-art and efficient
interpreter engine.  Its source code is very accessible and easy to
understand.  It also has many robustness features that have been the
object of careful design.

SableVM is a clean-room implementation of the publicly available
specifications.

SableVM is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License (LGPL).  It also uses a modified version of GNU Classpath
called sablevm-classpath which is licensed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL) with a linking exception.

The license of SableVM (LGPL) was specifically chosen as to maximize
your ability to legally link and run popular applications, such as
Eclipse (http://eclipse.org) and Ant (http://ant.apache.org), which
are licensed in ways which might conflict with the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL).  See the the following link for more
information:

   http://sablevm.org/wiki/License_FAQ

The SableVM web site is located at:

   http://sablevm.org


=== INSTALLATION FROM SOURCE ===

SableVM is available to download at:

   http://sablevm.org/download/release/

You must download and later install *both*:

- sablevm-1.11.tar.gz
- sablevm-classpath-1.11.tar.gz.

See the INSTALL file included in the sablevm-1.11.tar.gz archive for
build environment requirements and installation procedures.

We make frequent releases, but we also provide daily snapshots of the
source code repository trunk at:

   http://sablevm.org/download/snapshot/

Note that the code of this trunk is more robust than the code usually
found in the CVS trunk of many other free software projects.  The
trunk only contains code that has been first tested by developers
within their own sandboxes.  A detailed explanation of the different
development branches is available at:

   http://sablevm.org/wiki/Development_Branches


=== NOTES ===

We appreciate your feedback.  Please feel invited to contact us.  See:

   http://sablevm.org/support.html

You can also join us in real-time on the #sablevm IRC channel on
irc.sablevm.org (alias: irc.freenode.net, irc.debian.org).


=== BINARY PACKAGES ===

Binary packages of new SableVM versions are usually available in the
GNU/Linux Debian "unstable" distribution shortly after the official
release.  These packages normally migrate to the "testing"
distribution a few weeks later.

Some other GNU/Linux distributions (Gentoo, etc.) and other operating
systems (*BSD, etc.) also provide binary packages or a convenient
build environment to compile and install sablevm.  For details see:

   http://sablevm.org/download.html


=== DEVELOPMENT OF SABLEVM ===

If you would like to help developing SableVM please join us!  For all
interested we provide a very comfortable environment:

* Subversion accounts

   We provide accounts in our Subversion repository for developers who
   want to work collaboratively on improving SableVM or its class
   libraries.  If you want to join, you should simply ask us for a
   subversion account on the development mailing list
   <address@hidden>.

   Subversion is an improved CVS that takes approximately 10 minutes to
   learn for a person familiar with CVS.

* Very frequent updates from upstream GNU Classpath CVS repository

   The trunk of sablevm-classpath is synchronized with the GNU
   Classpath CVS trunk every few days.

* Private sandbox for each developer

   Each developer is given full access to his own "sandbox" to create
   private development branches (as they're nearly 0-cost to create in
   Subversion).  So each developer's development doesn't interfere with
   other developers.  Each developer can also create private "tags" on
   any code in Subversion.  These tags are publicly available via the
   Web interface at:

   http://sablevm.org/svn/developers/

* No copyright assignment requirement

   We accept contributions without asking for copyright assignment for
   developers.  Our contribution policy is available at:

http://sablevm.org/svn/repository/sablevm/trunk/doc/contribution_policy.txt


=== Additional Information ===

You will find a wealth of additional information in SableVM's wiki
pages at:

   http://sablevm.org/wiki/


=== CONCLUSION ===

We wish you great fun using SableVM.

Enjoy!


         The SableVM Project developers
-- 
Grzegorz B. Prokopski           <address@hidden>
SableVM - Free, LGPL'ed Java VM  http://sablevm.org
Why SableVM ?!?                  http://sablevm.org/wiki/Features
Debian GNU/Linux - the Free OS   http://www.debian.org