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Date:      Fri, 24 Aug 2001 18:38:29 -0400
From:      Tim Liddelow <tim@ideasandassociates.com>
To:        Bill Huey <billh@gnuppy.monkey.org>
Cc:        freebsd-java@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Contributing...
Message-ID:  <3B86D765.249C2214@ideasandassociates.com>
References:  <3B8688AA.6956F1BD@ideasandassociates.com> <20010824131403.A3036@gnuppy>

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Bill Huey wrote:

>
> Yes, and I dumped on it in favor of a pthread implementation instead
> in light of the KSE effort and how LinuxThreading was hacked into the
> thread creation/destruction glue layer (wierd SIGCHLD stuff, etc...).
>
> This is what led to the current track for getting native threads working.

The KSE effort seems promising, but my experience with -current is old now (I
haven't toyed with it since pre SMPng days..and I haven't been active on the
lists at all), and Julian seems to only be in the initial stages (compilation
going but unstable).  I wish to focus on contributing to a rock solid, -stable
port of the recent JDKs and give FreeBSD the chance to show off its other
powers (great VM system, etc) in a Java environment.  I can also leverage some
work I am doing here in the commercial sector without encumbrance because the
result will be utilised by us in production environments (this is probably
similar to some others here I hope!).

> > Also, what about HotSpot ?  Has anyone attempted to port this to any of
> > the BSDs ?   I'm looking at other JITs now.  The latest TYA doesn't
> > build under the 1.3.1 kit.
>
> These are the two biggest items on my list while I'm in between jobs.
>
> The order of attack is native threading first and then HotSpot. IMO,
> both can be worked on simultaneously, but you absolutely have to have
> the threading solid (green, native) before you can even smoke test
> HotSpot. So getting HotSpot to compile would likely be the hard limit
> for progress until the surrounding JVM facilities were to solidify.

I have been lightly following the pthread updates; I know a lot of fixes were
committed a few months back - how complete now is our pthread support ?   I
agree with you that native thread support must be done first ... I was hoping
however to familiarise myself again with the byte code compiler, then take a
look at HotSpot and being to dissect it - but only initially from the point of
view of kernel differences between FreeBSD and Linux.

>
> Both the JVM thread (virtual machine craziness + language runtimes) and
> HotSpot (C++ based with tricky *everything* that come with JIT compilers
> cores) systems are non-trivial and it would take at least a number of
> weeks for an accomplished engineer (IMO) to be comfortable with virtual
> machine abstractions and do basic work with it.

Sure.  But we have to start somewhere.  I don't promise to be able to make
everything happen - but if we begin, maybe we will gather more interest and
hopefully get some momentum going.  Usually things don't get done in this
space not because of experienced people (to a point!), but usually because of
motivational and coordinational factors.  Can we get any help from anyone at
Sun who did the Linux port of HotSpot ?   Nate ?

Cheers
Tim.



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