RE: [mylar-dev] Stand alone bug tracking

["Mik Kersten" <beatmik@xxxxxxx>]

Fyi I just looked into this and here is the reasoning, straight from the
horse's mouth, Neal Gafter, who states that this is a legal issue.  His
blessing of Retroweaver is definitely promising.  In case anyone is
interested:

http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?forumID=316&threadID=503547

> Is it possible to limit what compiler compiles to 1.4
> so it can do it cleanly? Just Generics? 

We cannot legally do this unless there is a platform specification that
describes this version of the language. JLS2 doesn't allow generics, and
JLS3 will have ALL the new language features. What would be the TCK
compatibility requirements for this hybrid language?

> I would be willing not to use the rest for the
> features for a while. Just whatewer subset of 1.5
> which can be cleanly compiled to 1.4 People already
> start looking for work around (retroweaver is an
> example) it is indicateive to the needs of the
> comunity

I'm very happy to see retroweaver available!
...
The problem is not and engineering problem of how to implement it - as you
can see from the jsr14 prototype, we've worked out the technical issues -
nor of why we should do so. We even know how to make enums work (thanks,
Lubo!). The problem is a legal one in that it violates the Java platform
specifications. That is not something we would allow our licensees to do,
and we should not therefore do it ourselves. If we allow the hybrid language
then we will need a language specification, a conformance suite, and
licensing terms for the hybrid language.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mik Kersten [mailto:beatmik@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 9:32 PM
> To: 'Mylar developer discussions'
> Subject: RE: [mylar-dev] Stand alone bug tracking
> 
> Sorry if I wasn't clear about this.  The idea proposed here is to use
> Retroweaver (http://retroweaver.sourceforge.net) to post-process our JDK
> 1.5 bytecodes to be 1.4 compatible.  If it works as advertised Mylar
> should run on any 1.4 VM, and not require a 1.5 VM to be installed.
> 
> From a technical point of view making 1.5 sources run on a 1.5 VM is not a
> fundamentally difficult problem, just that apparently Sun has had no
> incentive to do it.  So it's great to see projects like backport175 and
> Retroweaver address this issue.
> 
> Mik
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: mylar-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:mylar-dev-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> > On Behalf Of Ed Burnette
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 9:20 PM
> > To: Mylar developer discussions
> > Subject: RE: [mylar-dev] Stand alone bug tracking
> >
> > >From a user point of view, I could use it because I'm an early adopter
> > and am running 1.6. But 99% of my colleagues are using the minimum JVM
> > that is required by our product, which is 1.4.1 (to be upgraded to 1.4.2
> > within the next year). I know it's possible to have multiple JVM's
> > installed on one machine and use a newer one for Eclipse but for various
> > reasons (like, the last one you install is the default one in the
> Windows
> > registry) they're not going to go for that.
> >
> > And since my users are running 1.4.x I can't even use a 1.5 JRE in my
> > build path because it's too easy to accidentally put in a 1.5 dependency
> > that way.
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