So the train continues to pick up steam...
Today, IBM (fd - I'm an IBM employee...) made a contribution to the Apache Harmony project. You can read the contribution announcement here.
The highlights :
- A VM/classlibrary interface that has been production tested and a good candidate for standardization
- A core set of the Java class library (java.lang, java.util, java.io, java.net, et al) that is enough to run Ant or the Eclipse compiler - our goal here is to get a self-hosting compiler....
- Native code support for Win32 and Linux
- IBM also made available their VM under an evaluation license to help people evaluate and test the code contribution. The VM isn't a contribution to the project, and can only be downloaded from IBM.
Next steps for the project include evaluation of the codebase, accepting (I assume) the codebase, and then work on getting our current VMs to support the VM/classlib interface, working to get Kaffe to support the interface so there is a free VM available to use with this, and working with GNU Classpath to support this alternative VM/classlib interface so that GNU Classpath can be run on the IBM VM if they wish...
I think this is really exciting. As I said in a note to the list, I think of Harmony as a big freight train. It's hard to get moving, but when you do, even a little velocity means you have a big momentum.
