GNU Classpath 0.18 released. We are pleased to announce a new developer snapshot of GNU Classpath. GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools for the java programming language. The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development platforms. For example the GCC (gcj) and Kaffe projects will use the developer snapshots as a base for future versions. This is our first release after "The Big Merge" with GCC/GCJ. GNU Classpath can now be used as a subdirectory of libgcj inside the GCC tree so it will be much easier to keep GCC up-to-date with the latest GNU Classpath developer release snapshots. Some highlights of changes in this release (more extensive list below): Added GNU JAWT for awt native interface support. Datatransfer clipboard updated to 1.5 including support for copy/paste of serialized objects, images and files. Completed the org.omg PortableInterceptor, DynamicAny and Portable Object Adapter packages. Multi plaf support for Free Swing. Editing support for JTree and JTable. Lots of icons and look and feel improvements for Free Swing basic and metal themes. NIO FileChannel.map implemented and DirectByteBuffer put method speedups. Image loading speedups for awt. Support for darwin and solaris out of the box. 29 people actively contributed to this release and made 535 CVS commits during the two months of development. diffstat since 0.17: 994 files changed, 114744 insertions(+), 13663 deletions(-) More details about the various changes and contributions below. A full list of bug reports fixed for this release can be found at: http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?product=classpath&target_milestone=0.18 This release depends on gtk+ 2.4 for AWT support. But gtk+ 2.6 or higher is recommended. Included, but not activated by default in this release is a Graphics2D implementation based on the Cairo Graphics framework (http://www.cairographics.org). Enabling this makes programs like JFreeChart and JEdit start up on GNU Classpath based runtimes. To enable this support install the cairo 0.5.x snapshot, configure GNU Classpath with --enable-gtk-cairo. One of the major focuses of the GNU Classpath project is expanding and using the Mauve test suite for Compatibility, Completeness and Correctness checking. Various groups around GNU Classpath collaborate on the free software Mauve test suite which contains 32.000+ core library tests. Mauve has various modules for testing core class library implementations, byte code verifiers, source to byte code and native code compiler tests. Mauve also contains the Wonka visual test suite and the Jacks Compiler Killer Suite. See for more information: http://www.sourceware.org/mauve/ This release passes 31194 out of 32253 Mauve core library tests. Conformance reports for the included jaxp support can be found in the doc/README.jaxp file. GNU Classpath 0.18 can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/classpath/ or one of the ftp.gnu.org mirrors http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html File: classpath-0.18.tar.gz MD5sum: c0650c257aa93eafb709553f172f0bbb SHA1sum: 28061c750244cac4ff0151da6aba183b94b98b25 The GNU Classpath developers site http://developer.classpath.org/ provides detailed information on how to start with helping the GNU Classpath project and gives an overview of the core class library packages currently provided. For each snapshot release generated documentation is provided through the GNU Classpath Tools gjdoc project. A documentation generation framework for java source files used by the GNU project. Full documentation on the currently implementated packages and classes can be found at: http://developer.classpath.org/doc/ New in release 0.18 (Sep 6, 2005) (See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.) * GNU JAWT implementation, the AWT Native Interface, which allows direct access to native screen resources from within a Canvas's paint method. GNU Classpath Examples comes with a Demo, see examples/README. * awt.datatransfer updated to 1.5 with supports for FlavorEvents. The gtk+ awt peers now allow copy/paste of text, images, uris/files and serialized objects with other applications and tracking clipboard change events with gtk+ 2.6 (for gtk+ 2.4 only text and serialized objects are supported). A GNU Classpath Examples datatransfer Demo was added to show the new functionality. * org.omg.PortableInterceptor and related functionality in other packages is now implemented: - The sever and client interceptors work as required since 1.4. - The IOR interceptor works as needed for 1.5. * The org.omg.DynamicAny package is completed and passes the prepared tests. * The Portable Object Adapter should now support the output of the recent IDL to java compilers. These compilers now generate servants and not CORBA objects as before, making the output depended on the existing POA implementation. Completing POA means that such code can already be tried to run on Classpath. Our POA is tested for the following usager scenarios: - POA converts servant to the CORBA object. - Servant provides to the CORBA object. - POA activates new CORBA object with the given Object Id (byte array) that is later accessible for the servant. - During the first call, the ServantActivator provides servant for this and all subsequent calls on the current object. - During each call, the ServantLocator provides servant for this call only. - ServantLocator or ServantActivator forwards call to another server. - POA has a single servant, responsible for all objects. - POA has a default servant, but some objects are explicitly connected to they specific servants. The POA is verified using tests from the former cost.omg.org. * The javax.swing.plaf.multi.* package is now implemented. * Editing and several key actions for JTree and JTable were implemented. * Lots of icons and look and feel improvements for Free Swing basic and metal themes were added. Try running the GNU Classpath Swing Demo in examples (gnu.classpath.examples.swing.Demo) with: -Dswing.defaultlaf=javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicLookAndFeel -Dswing.defaultlaf=javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel * Start of styled text capabilites for java.swing.text. * NIO FileChannel.map implementation, fast bulk put implementation for DirectByteBuffer (speeds up this method 10x). * Split gtk+ awt peers event handling in two threads and improve gdk lock handling (solves several AWT lock ups). * Speed up awt Image loading. * Updated TimeZone data against Olson tzdata2005l. * Make zip and jar UTF-8 "clean". * "native" code builds and compiles (warning free) on Darwin and Solaris. Runtime interface changes: * All native resource "pointers" in the VM interface classes are now exposed as gnu.classpath.Pointer objects. This might impact runtimes that optimize and support java.nio.DirectByteBuffers. Creating these classes and accessing the contents as void * pointers for the native reference JNI implementation is done through the JCL_NewRawDataObject and JCL_GetRawData functions. * Simplified the Class/VMClass interface. * Removed loadedClasses map from ClassLoader. It's now the VMs responsibility to manage the list of defined and loaded classes for each class loader. * Moved native methods from java.lang.reflect.Proxy to VMProxy. * Added hook to VMClassLoader to allow VM to do class caching. New Untested/Disabled Features: The following new features are included, but not ready for production yet. They are explicitly disabled and not supported. But if you want to help with the development of these new features we are interested in feedback. You will have to explicitly enable them to try them out (and they will most likely contain bugs). If you are interested in any of these then please join the mailing-list and follow development in CVS. * QT4 AWT peers, enable by giving configure --enable-qt-peer. * JDWP framework, enable by deleting the jdwp references from lib/standard.omit and vm/reference/standard.omit. No default implementation is provided. Work is being done on gcj/gij integration. * StAX java.xml.stream, enable by deleting the gnu.xml.stream and java.xml.stream references in lib/standard.omit. The following people helped with this release: Aaron Luchko (Lots of JDWP work) Andreas Tobler (Darwin and Solaris testing and fixing Andrew Haley (gcj build speedups) Anthony Balkissoon (Lots of Free Swing work including JTable editing) Archie Cobbs (Build fixes) Audrius Meskauskas (Lots of omg corba work plus testing and documenting) Bastiaan Huisman (TimeZone bug fixing) Casey Marshall (NIO FileChannel.map support, security and policy updates) Chris Burdess (StAX work and gnu xml fixes) Christian Schlichtherle (Zip fixes and cleanups) Christian Thalinger (64-bit cleanups) Dalibor Topic (Qt4 build infrastructure) David Gilbert (Basic and Metal icon and plaf and lots of documenting) Guilhem Lavaux (JCL native Pointer updates) Ingo Proetel (Image, Logger and URLClassLoader updates) Ito Kazumitsu (NetworkInterfaces implementation and updates) Jan Roehrich (BasicTreeUI updates) Jeroen Frijters (VMProxy and VMClassLoader updates, RMIClassLoader fixes) Keith Seitz (Lots of JDWP work) Kelley Cook (Build fixes) Lillian Angel (Lots of Free Swing work including JTree editing) Mark Wielaard (Clipboard implementation, build and release infrastructure) Rainer Orth (Build fixes) Robert Schuster (Documentation updates and beans fixes) Roman Kennke (Lots of Free Swing work including styled text) Sven de Marothy (Qt4 peers) Thomas Fitzsimmons (Lots of gtk+ awt peer work) Tom Tromey (Lots of fixes including coordinating The Big Merge) Wolfgang Baer (GapContent bug fixes) We would also like to thank the numerous bug reporters and testers!
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