Re: [aspectj-users] ajc vs. javac - commercial application - convincing

[Macneil Shonle <mshonle@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Ramnivas Laddad claims that ajc is built on top of the Eclipse
> compiler (p. 440, and I think this may not be true in 1.1.1), but I
> don't know any details about its architecture. How much can I trust it
> - how do I know that the ajc compiler won't introduce bugs not present
> in code built with javac?

As far as I know ajc is still built from the Eclipse version. There was a
large conversion from 1.0.6 to use the Eclipse code, so I couldn't
possibly see how the switch from 1.1 to 1.1.1 would be any different
(which was mostly a bug fix release).

> I'm a developer who needs to "sell" aspectJ to my organization. I'm
> using it as part of a gui testing framework. The system I'm testing is
> currently in production, built with a SDK javac. In the future I'd
> like to build with ajc, run the suite of AO gui tests, and, if all
> tests pass, ship *that* build.
>
> I'm looking for specific arguments convincing my managers that the
> risk of using ajc vs. javac is tiny.

I think if you're using AspectJ for testing the risk of using ajc should
be pretty low.

> By the way, part of their anxiety comes from the fact that Eclipse
> (with 256M) runs out of memory and crashes after 2 compiles, since
> memory used compiling is never reclaimed. Memory Monitor plugin did
> not help.  My managers find this less than confidence inspiring. A fix
> for this problem would be much more valuable to me than the fancy new
> Outline View. :-)

The good news is that you don't need Eclipse to develop in AspectJ. You
can use the standalone command instead. As far as the memory limit, I put
the following arguments into my Eclipse shortcut:

   -vmargs -Xms384m -Xmx384m

-Macneil