The Gnu Project has released version 3.4 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection. GCC contains front ends for various languages of course, and among those is a clean-room implementation of Java.

New Features

• Compiling a .jar file will now cause non-.class entries to be automatically compiled as resources
• libgcj has been ported to Darwin
• Jeff Sturm has adapted Jan Hubicka's call graph optimization code to gcj
• libgcj has a new gcjlib URL type; this lets URLClassLoader load code from shared libraries
• libgcj has been much more completely merged with GNU Classpath
• Class loading is now much more correct; in particular the caller's class loader is now used when that is required
• Eclipse 2.x will run out of the box using gij
• Parts of java.nio have been implemented. Direct and indirect buffers work, as do fundamental file and socket operations
• java.awt has been improved, though it is still not ready for general use
• The HTTP protocol handler now uses HTTP/1.1 and can handle the POST method
• The MinGW port has matured. Enhancements include socket timeout support, thread interruption, improved Runtime.exec() handling and support for accented characters in filenames

Read the GCC 3.4 Release Series Changes, New Features, and Fixes

Hello,

excuse me for being a bit sarcastic, but while reading this announcement I really was nonplussed:

"Class loading is now much more correct": So that means it wasn't correct before, and isn't correct now either? Cool!

"java.awt has been improved, though it is still not ready for general use": AWT was a steaming load of **** from the start of Java 1.0, and they haven't even implemented it now?

"The HTTP protocol handler now uses HTTP/1.1 and can handle the POST method": Now, this is advanced stuff. We can now, the year 2004 be thanked, handle the POST method! Who would have used POST anyway in 2003?

Either GCC4Java is a joke or I'm not getting it... enlightenment, please :-)!

Cheers,
    Henrik

Yep, it's been a joke always. Nothing new here. Just take a look at the GNU ClassPath project and then the GNU Wheel project.

One of the reasons a lot of people in the open source world object to Java as an appropriate language for open source programming is that open source Java programs tend to require JVMs that are not open source.

The availability of very good free (but not open source) JVMs has limited motivation to work on open source JVMs, and while many in the Java world may not be impressed, I believe running something like Eclipse out of the box represents a significant step forward.

I for one would welcome wider use of Java in the open source community.

Thank you for saving me the bother of trying to be as witty and sarcastic as you at reading such an absurd announcement...

Thank you for saving me the bother of trying to be as witty and sarcastic as you at reading such an absurd announcement...

Maybe the announcement was a little weak, hopefully that will not dissuade you both from learning a little about the project as it is rather impressive. To answer one point, as far as the AWT implementation, I don't think that's their focus. SWT works (which is what Eclipse is built on) so it's not such a big issue as you might think. The .nio package is fairly new. Instead of crabbing about this, hopefully you'll learn about the project, even better help out. Here is a great article to get you started:

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-nativegui2/

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All I can say is that Rimfaxe kicks all other Jave Web Server/Servlet engines' asses

have you got any performance figures to support that claim ?