Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 10:04:47 -0600 From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> To: <tom.chappell@industryfigure.com> Cc: <freebsd-java@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Sun & FreeBSD? Message-ID: <199804221604.KAA03807@mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <000c01bd6dcd$997d7060$840726cf@tom.livesystems.com> References: <199804220657.QAA01719@cimlogic.com.au> <000c01bd6dcd$997d7060$840726cf@tom.livesystems.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> But as to the question of why I characterized it as only well-begun, as > opposed to being completed and ready for additional enhancements, I must say > that I am astonished at your surprise. I say that because I've had trouble > running most of the larger Java applications that I've tried to run on the > current build. Did you have problems running them, or did you get error messages when you ran them? > Are you saying that you haven't had the same experience? Not at all. :) I consider my application one of the larger Java applications around. I think we're close to 8MB of source now, not including the 3rd party libraries (PSE/PRO, Swing, Javachart, OrbixWeb/CORBA libraries, some other minor ones.) > I > had assumed that it was universal. To be clear, what I'm saying is that > most of the larger Java programs that I try to run with the current build > mostly work, but exhibit bugs not seen on other Java platforms. And those bugs would be? > Here are some notable items from the http://www.FreeBSD.org/java page > itself: > > "This is a pre-release version..." > > "jdk1.1.5.V98-2-25.tar.gz appears to have some difficult-to-track-down > socket bugs." Yep, and these bugs *only* appear on certain Java applications. My applications uses Sockets *heavily*, but I never see any problems with the current port. > "There are a few known bugs which occur when tested against the supplied > demos. They do not bomb out, but display error messages. The most common > occurs when you start appletviewer: > java in free(): warning: chunk is already free. FWIW, these are bugs in the JDK. I was just speaking with Steve Byrne yesterday about these, and it turns out that the malloc on the Sun refuses to free already freed memory. However, it simply ignores it, while the FreeBSD malloc lets you know that something bad is occurring. These bugs exist on *all* unix ports as best we can tell, and actually cause problems on Linux because the 2nd free is not ignored. > "There is also a 'signal abort' error that occurs at random times." I'm pretty sure this bug if fixed in the development branch, but since no-one can seem to find us a program that can reproduce this bug, it's difficult to know. I do have a very simply program that reproduces the 'chunk is already free' bug, but I just got it yesterday, and I haven't even sent it to the development list since Steve and I were doing our own sluething (he had already done it all, and I was doing it on my own). However, with the immenint release of JDK1.1.6 looming, I'm simply waiting for it before doing much more work, hoping that it will fix many of the existing bugs we're seeing. I'm a bit more positive about this release, since it's been a long time coming plus it's sole intention is to be a bugfix/stability release. I'm hoping they don't attempt to make it into a '1.2 transition' release and instead follow their original charter. > Again, you folks have done a great job taking it this far, but as a FreeBSD > user, I just wish that the port was a little closer to production quality > (of the same quality as FreeBSD itself, say). These bugs are no greater than the bugs that exist in the JDK, but they are specific to the FreeBSD port (at least, I thought they were until the 'free chunk' bug reports started showing up.) The socket bug is now the only known bug that exists in FreeBSD, and to be honest if I can't reproduce it, I can't fix it. And, I know of *tons* of applications that use networking that work flawlessly under the current JDK/JVM, so it's not a high-priority for me. Nate To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-java" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199804221604.KAA03807>