[platform-swt-dev] AIX port of SWT

[Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxx]

Forwarding to mailing list for wider visibility...

McQ.

----- Forwarded by Mike Wilson/OTT/OTI on 03/22/2002 09:36 AM -----

johnrose@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 03/21/2002 05:23 PM

To:        kcornell@xxxxxxxxxxxx         cc:        amackay@xxxxxxxxxx, <Mike_Wilson@xxxxxxx>         Subject:        AIX port of SWT

Kevin-

Mike Wilson mentioned that you have been doing most of the launcher work for
Eclipse.  I wanted to get your thoughts on some of the changes we've added to
our private build of the launcher code for the AIX case.

Eclipse users on AIX will use one of two Java VM's, IBM's Java 1.3.0 or 1.3.1.
The IBM Java people have added a command-line argument for VM 1.3.1 that
optimizes JIT activity for GUI applications.  Without this command-line
argument, Eclipse with IBM Java 1.3.1 is *extremely* slow.  With the argument,
it's 20-30 percent faster than 1.3.0.

It is our view that we should not require Eclipse users who use Java 1.3.1 to
manually add this VM argument (eclipse -vmargs -Xquickstart ....), for two
reasons: 1) Users either won't bother or won't know to use it, and 2) There
will not be a case in which it is desirable not to use it.  As a result, I have
added some code to the launcher source to append this argument to the list of
VM args.

Since the argument was not added until v1.3.1, use of this argument with 1.3.0
results in a fatal error message. To avoid this, the changes check for the case
of a Java VM greater than or equal to 1.3.1, and append the argument.  All of
this code is ifdef'ed out for the AIX case.

I understand that it would be nice to avoid dropping any more system-dependent
code in the launcher src, but it is our thought that these changes are
better than the alternative.  I would like to hear your thoughts on this, along
with any suggestions on how to go about getting these changes made.

Your help is appreciated-
John

----------------
John Rose
AIX Kernel Development
johnrose@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Office: 512-838-0298
Tieline: 678-0298