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Java Programming

Blackdown Releases a 1.4.1 JDK 64

gholmer writes "The Blackdown project has finally released a production version of Java 1.4.1 for both ix86 and Sparc on Linux. This much-awaited release gives Linux users another choice for Java besides Sun's and IBM's."
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Blackdown Releases a 1.4.1 JDK

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  • gcj? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @04:13PM (#5305303) Homepage Journal
    What about using the Java front-end for the Gnu Compiler Collection?

    (I'm not a Java developer, but I was under the impression that it, also, was another choice besides Sun's and IBM's.)
    • Re:gcj? (Score:5, Informative)

      by smileyy ( 11535 ) <smileyy@gmail.com> on Friday February 14, 2003 @04:56PM (#5305670)
      If you're talking about the native compilation aspect of gcj, there's a goodly number of things that won't work when compiled with gcj. Most notable is Swing.

      If you're talking about the bytecode compilation aspect of gcj, then you still need a JVM to run those bytecodes in.
      • Re:gcj? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by KDan ( 90353 )
        So hold on, maybe someone knowledgeable can answer this question for me... if I write, say, a servlet, that I integrate with, say, Jetty, then I can compile that with gjc and have it running as a NATIVE application under linux?

        If the answer is yes, is there a way to do this under windows too??

        Daniel
        • I'm assuming Jetty is also written in Java. So you'd have to get Jetty to compile w/ gcj as well.

          Under windows, I imagine you could do all that from within Cygwin.
          • by KDan ( 90353 )
            Yes, Jetty is a lightweight servlet container, so written in Java.

            But would a windows user be able to use the compiled version without having cygwin installed??

            Daniel
            • Re:gcj? (Score:2, Informative)

              by damiam ( 409504 )
              Yes. You might have to distribute it with the cygwin DLL, but the user wouldn't need a full cygwin installation.
              • by AG ( 3175 )
                No, you don't have to use cygwin. There's a mingw32 version that will let you build real cygwin-less binaries. See http://www.thisiscool.com/gcc33_mingw.htm

                People are even building ActiveX controls with gcj: http://www.xwt.org

                AG
                • I know, but the discussion was about using gcc under cygwin. To use gcc under cygwin, you must use cygwin. mingw is very cool, however.
                • No, you don't have to use cygwin. There's a mingw32 version that will let you build real cygwin-less binaries.

                  But does that work for networking applications too? Last I checked, a mingw binary could not use any socket code.

        • by AG ( 3175 )
          I can speak with some authority on this, since I actually run a natively compiled Tomcat on Linux. I can compiler servlets into .so files so they get used instead of the .class files, or it will just read and use the .class/.jar files directly.
          Tomcat 3.* works nicely. http://sources.redhat.com/rhug. Gary Benson is working on Tomcat 4.* right now. The trick it to build it properly and shake any remaining bugs out of our core class library implementation.

          And, yes - there's even a mingw32 gcj (which you can also use from Linux as a Linux-cross-mingw32 compiler).

      • Re:gcj? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @08:00PM (#5306678) Journal
        you still need a JVM to run those bytecodes in.

        GIJ, the GNU interpreter for Java, is also included in the GCJ package. GCJ isn't a finished product yet, but when it is, it will be a complete JDK and JRE (compiler, VM, and libraries) with the added ability to compile to native code if you want to, and all open source under the GPL.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    You can get all of IBM's JDKs here [ibm.com]
  • by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot@NosPam.stefanco.com> on Friday February 14, 2003 @04:28PM (#5305444) Homepage Journal
    I'm curious, why would I want to use Blackdown or IBM's Java over Sun's Java? Am I missing some wonderous features or something?

    Any tables out there comparing the various Java Flavors?

    Seems to me that Sun's Java is the most mature of the Java's, and that Sun engineers have the most experience with Java and therefore will probably create the best Java implementation.

    Am I wrong?
    • I personally prefer using Sun's Java, however, I always hear some people telling me that it is slower and such ... I still trust Sun's JDK to follow the rules more than any other JDK .. Thanks for reading ...
      • by Anonymous Coward
        I believe IBM's Java is more compliant with the java spec than Sun's Java. At least passes more border test cases. I'm sure the googlinator can yield more evidence than I'm providing (none..)

        Sorry for claims without references, don't have time right now to research them out
        D
    • Well if you use a recent version of Mozilla that can't run the java plugin from Sun's JDK (1.4.01), maybe Blackdown's version will have a plugin that works?

      I'm hoping for that at least..

      Maybe Sun will get with the program and release a JDK/JRE compiled with a recent version of GCC.
    • by tradervik ( 462791 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @10:37PM (#5307172)
      IBM's 1.3.1 JDK for Linux had noticably better performance than the Sun JDK in certain areas. There is an extensive performance report posted on www.javalobby.org. I think you have to register (free) to access the report.
    • For blackdown's debian pacakges versus the sun stuff I noticed a speed increase in some program, most notably was a game my friend wrote in Java.
    • > I'm curious, why would I want to use Blackdown or IBM's Java over Sun's Java? Am I missing some wondrous features or something?

      I doubt it. Also Sun's technologies from Java to UltraSparc are well specified and designed so that their technologies are more open (standard) than open source, so we don't really have to go for Blackdown.

      But from Computer Software Ideology stand point of view, it is nice to see that Java spec is well defined and has good license terms so that other vendors can implement their own version (production level quality right?) and distribute it legally and freely. That has been proved by Blackdown today.

      Personally, I'd stick to Sun's Java (even though some claim that it's not best Java), but announcements like this makes Java even more attractive to me (than ... dot something).
    • NUMBERS: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by thufir ( 129668 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @08:33AM (#5308312)
      A project I am working on involves using soap (ApachesSOAP) as a transport layer and performing serialization of data to xml using Castors xml abilities (so xerces as well). It also uses the JDO part of castor to persist the data, and also to keep logs and some more complex things as well (PostgreSQL for this test). (I am running system on a Linux 2.4.19 machine with a 2.20GHz Intel CPU. (No swapping occured)

      Here are some numbers for a test involving simply serializing one of the complete object trees of data using castor, in a loop executed 1000 times:

      Sun JDK 'java version "1.3.1": (avg/3) 5.8s
      Sun JDK 'java version "1.4.1_01"': (avg/3) 6.4s
      Blackdown 'java version "1.4.1": (avg/3) 5.3s

      Sending a message with the the above generated xml full cycle through the system (multiple threads of execution here, multiple database connections as well (pooled), passing data over soap, etc), looped 200 times took the following times: (again, avg.)

      (sun 1.4.1): 44.2s
      (sun 1.4.1): 44.6s
      (bd 1.4.1): 41.4s

      In both the coded test, and the real world situation, Blackdown's JDK outperformed Sun 1.4 and 1.3 jdks.
      • Re:NUMBERS: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by aled ( 228417 )
        Did you tried the one compiled 3.2? that may explain the difference. supposedly gcc 3.2 generates faster executables than previous versions and Sun's java (I guess) has been compiled with gcc 2.9x.
      • Don't forget to try IBM's.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      PowerPC linux does not have binaries from Sun. IBM and Blackdown have binaries for PowerPC Linux. IBM Java is much better than Blackdown Java preformance wise.
    • No no, IBM's is the best.

      (Disclaimer: I work for IBM on on their Java JIT compiler, and therefore cannot be trusted on this matter.)

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14, 2003 @04:39PM (#5305528)
    Jvaa WebStart rocks! apt-get, emerge, windows installer, bsd ports all pale in comparison to WS. You just go the web page of the app click a link and the program downloads and installs itself. The downloaded app doesn't have full access to your system resources (printer, network, loacl disks etc.) until you give it permission. So you can download random safe self-contained applications without worring about malicious authors. Each time you run the program it will (if the networks available) check the server for new versions, and automatically upgrade. Its so quick & painless. Where i work we have a intranet app thats rolled out to 600 people and since we started using websart what was a real admin head-ache is now something that just happens. The app is maintained by us and upgrades could only be once a month, because we had to guarantee everyone used the same version - not as easy as you think in practice, but webstart is my favourite thing ever!!!

    finally with the blackdown release the webstart icons will be integrated into the gnome desktop so the java app will launch just like a native app (is done this in windows for ages) our linux users will be so happy!!!!

    i'm so pleased about this i just pissed my pants

  • by jake_the_blue_spruce ( 64738 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @05:09PM (#5305762) Homepage Journal
    Now we can finally build mozilla with 3.2 and drop all this crazy crap we've been doing to work around it. I can't believe Sun hasn't put out a 3.2 compiled version yet (plans for 1.4.2 to be though). I don't know about IBM. Anyone?
  • by HaiLHaiL ( 250648 ) on Friday February 14, 2003 @07:02PM (#5306445) Homepage
    http://www.bea.com/products/weblogic/jrockit/index .shtml

    awesome server side JVM
    • Awesome stray space, you mean. :-p

      Seriously, if I see things correctly, this is a different beast altogether, running on server side. The beauty of Java applets is that you can run your code on client machines, offloading the server. If I wanted to run programs on my server I would go native anyway, but that may just be because I don't like Java.

      ---
      "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that
      would also stop you from doing clever things."
      --Doug Gwyn
      • Your opinion reflects the vast majority of people who do not use java. Applets are flawed, and IMO a last resort. For a long while, the client-side jvm was tied to browser releases instead of released as bonified plugins. This was a horrible idea in the long term. Also, MS's JVM adds standards fragmentation to the picture. A more useful and elegant solution for any problem an applet would solve would be DHTML, coupled with server-side scripting.

        The main users of Java are indeed server side. Native applications are great if you're talking about Infrastructure-level usage. Applications like email, webserving, fileserving, etc are so fundamental that implementing them in Java is a waste of time. However, implementing Business Foo's web application natively is usually not a good idea. Modeling business process in software is a painstaking task, in part because of the enormity of the task, and in part because it's always subject to change. Changing native code to match business process sucks compared to Changing java or (insert scripting language here).

        Applications like Ebay, google, or perhaps Amazon do not change nearly as much, and as such can be (and are) better implemented natively.
  • I sure would like to se some detailed changlog on the blackdown work. Its based on the sources from Sun, now what the heck is diffrent ?
  • I have a lot of Crapintosh G3s lying around at work that I have "revived" by putting Linux on em. (OS X runs way too slowly)

    Blackdown is what I've been using for 1.3 java, I can only pray they have a PPC one in the works (with a JIT compiler would be great as well!!)

    Anyone have information on this?

    --Zuchini
  • I just wish that ANYONE would come out with a modern JDK for FreeBSD. No, I'm not happy with the patchwork solution, and I'm not happy with linux emu (memory overhead, thanks).

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