Slashdot Mirror

You'll note that those downloads include all the core libraries that Sun promised to release. Why don't they redirect users looking at http://openjdk.dev.java.net/ [java.net] to that page?

Don't be so quick to condemn Sun. Open sourcing a gigantic project like Java takes time, especially since they don't own much of the code and needed to establish a governance model.

You got the wrong link.

This is the correct one:

http://openjdk.java.net/

I'm not sure why Sun didn't fix the other link, though, because it's clearly out of date.

Actually, that's the wrong page. For some crazy reason that's incomprehensible to the average human being, Sun moved the code to a different page. See here:

http://openjdk.java.net/

You'll note that those downloads include all the core libraries that Sun promised to release. Why don't they redirect users looking at http://openjdk.dev.java.net/ to that page? I have no idea, but there you go.

Actually, that's the wrong page. For some crazy reason that's incomprehensible to the average human being, Sun moved the code to a different page. See here:

http://openjdk.java.net/

You'll note that those downloads include all the core libraries that Sun promised to release. Why don't they redirect users looking at http://openjdk.dev.java.net/ to that page? I have no idea, but there you go.

Update: Check here instead - http://openjdk.java.net/

* Where is the effort being organised

* Is there a list of the methods that need to be reimplemented?

* Have I been tainted -- I've seen java code before, If I reimplement something and it might look like the previous code, how do I guard against this?

* Can we make java better?

What's being open sourced is this (see https://openjdk.dev.java.net/):

  Today this project contains two significant components of the JDK:

        * The HotSpot Virtual Machine
        * The Java programming-language compiler (javac),
            with complete NetBeans project metadata

There are several high performance virtual machines and compilers for Java already, so this doesn't really make much difference to anybody.

The parts that matter are the libraries and the specifications. But there are lots of open questions about those. Are they going to be GPL with or without linking exception? What parts are actually going to be missing? Does Sun claim patent rights (creating a Novell/Microsoft-like situation)? What's the effect of Sun's dual licensing? How is Sun going to get community development working if they still have a commercial license? Is Sun going to require copyright assignments?

I'm getting pretty tired of the way this stuff is dribbling out of Sun and the kinds of games Sun seems to be playing with licenses. I've removed Sun Java from my Linux system; gcj, Classpath, and IKVM work fine.

Say, can I use an interpreted scripting language on the JVM? Which one would be most suited?

• Rhino Javascript engine - built in to Java SE 6
• Groovy - An agile dynamic language for the Java Platform
• BeanShell: Lightweight Scripting for Java
• The Sleep Scripting Project

While some parts of .NET are not be as good as other offerings on the market, as a whole there is nothing which compares to it.

Yes there is, the Java platform, which has a larger number of users, developers, and platforms it has been ported to.

.NET brings everything under one roof

We know. Microsofts roof. I don't want to be there.

eliminates entire classes of "glue" and "can't get there from here" problems.

I notice you don't give any concrete examples to refute... Is it possible that some of these "can't get there from here" problems you mention exist on other platforms because they were designed with more security in mind, or to be more platform independent for instance?

You've all seen the demos of movies projected onto flying 3D surfaces etcetera

Pfft. Like that is new. Come back when it works both for Linux, Solaris, Mac, or Windows, OpenGL accelerated.

With .NET and Silverlight, it is slowly becoming possible to leverage the same skills and code on the Web (both server side and client side), the desktop, games consoles, set top boxes, PDAs and Mobile phones.

Just like the Java platform then, only 5 years late and Windows only.

Christ, that sounds like a commercial.

Yes, you do sound very much like a commercial.

Java doesn't use any native GUI toolkits, except in AWT
Not really true anymore. Java 6 (Mustang) added support for native component rendering in XP/Vista and GTK from Swing. Not there on OSX yet (AFAIK), but hopefully soon. A lot of the JDesktop stuff (desktop integration support) is implemented on OSX.

nobody in their right mind uses AWT anymore. It's been unofficially deprecated ever since Swing came out
Well, Swing is built on top of AWT, so anyone using Swing is by definition also using AWT. It's true that in most cases it's a better idea to use the Swing API than the AWT one directly, but even that's not a hard & fast rule.

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/danese/archive/224252 17_91f9b5af34.jpg

Interested java developers should check out pnuts as an alternative.

The truly useful stuff, the class libraries, will be available later this year.

Rome wasn't built in a day...

In the meantime, you can install java with apt, even if it isn't 'free' yet:

Installing Sun Java on Debian. Note that this page may be a little out of date. I'm running JDK 6 under Ubuntu Feisty. The relevant Java packages are sun-java6-*

The truly useful stuff, the class libraries, will be available later this year.

Rome wasn't built in a day...

In the meantime, you can install java with apt, even if it isn't 'free' yet:

Installing Sun Java on Debian. Note that this page may be a little out of date. I'm running JDK 6 under Ubuntu Feisty. The relevant Java packages are sun-java6-*

Because they're not done yet. Supposedly, that'll happen soon. When that happens I imagine Debian will be among the first to distribute the GPL source derived binaries. What they have thus far is the hotspot jvm and javac. There's a few parts left, before it's really useful without the closed source tools. You're of course welcome to be skecptical until they make good on that deadline.

I don't understand why you'd want a scripting language that targets the java vm.

Why? To run those tiny scripts from your giant business app or a heavyweight desktop app once it's all started up...

JDK 6 even includes a new extensible scripting framework support just for this very purpose, and ships with the Rhino JavaScript engine...

1. Hello? Since starting out with java 1.4 (maybe some unprofessional university work on 1.2) I've never ever seen any JVM based incompatibilities besides the full open source version, which I love in concept isn't quite there.

2. Although this is probably the largest adoption issue, the JVM can in fact be fast to start, at least with current generation hardware. This is more a problem that many people developing java apps don't have their end users at heart. Some apps can be written quickly display loading screens like so many flash pages do, or it could rely on leaving most of the data post-startup downloads like any decent flash movie downloader does. Thats not necessarily a weakness in the language but a disconnect in the people who develop them.

3. "programmers don't have to change the language they are used to" You're on drugs if you think that managed doesn't change the environment. Managed C++ -may- be an exception (haven't tried it personally), but I doubt you'll find many other language programmers singing the praises of the .NET conversion process (VB6 anyone?). Java is married to the JVM. Wow, what a concept. Its almost as stupid as saying AJAX is married to HTML, ha!

If you do want to use your scripting language of choice in the Java universe, you have choices: https://scripting.dev.java.net/

JNLP, a.k.a. Java WebStart, was supposed to solve some of these problems to create easy-install desktop applications. I think the reason that JNLP hasn't become commonly used can be summed up by looking at https://aerith.dev.java.net/, a page for one of the flagship "Cool JavaOne Demos." If you click on the JNLP version link on that page, it will appear to start up, downloading a bunch of stuff and asking you questions. And then it does nothing. No error messages or any information to tell you what happened. Repeated attempts yield the same results, only faster because the requisite files have already been downloaded. At least, that was my experience. If it worked for you, I'd say that's even worse--it randomly works on some platforms and not others. How do you debug such a thing?

But the fact that only parts are Free Software (or "Open Source" as they call it) yet does.
https://openjdk.dev.java.net/

That's not true. The source code has already been opened as a project:

https://jdk.dev.java.net/

The fact that they haven't made their first release from that product changes nothing.

I never touched JavaScript myself (well, to open and close a window, which is only an example I grabbed from a website) yet have been annoyed at people who didn't even manage to seperate Java from JavaScript. When it comes to web programming I've only used Java thus far through jsp or full servlets. Still, JavaScript is absolutely an important issue. It allows for server-side scripting without the hassle of a full container (in my case java container; tomcat or glassfish).

Still, what company knows best about JavaScript than Sun themselves? Recently the latest version of Java (Java SE 6) has been released and guess what one of its keyfeatures is? An API to support scripting languages. Right now the so called scripting engine only supports JavaScript, read about it here. For those really interested, here is the API documentation (javadoc).

I know I'm biased but heck; if people still don't realize the possibilities of JavaScript I'm pretty convinced that the combination of Java and JavaScript will enhance some of it. Java SE6 is pretty extensive, and with the addition of JavaScript even more flexible.

Didn't have you coffee yet this morning?
The parent makes a living programming J2EE. He might even use Eclipse.
I think for many folks Java is used to write software that does not see the front of a web page.
In fact I have not used Java on the client side since about '98. But I write far more Java now than I did back then. I hope that the work Ethan Nicholas is doing to will help, but frankly Flash works fine for many web pages. And as long as I don't have to write the Flash code I'm fine with that. Is it still programming via dialog box? Can I use svn with my Flash code these days? I also hear AJAX is popular and effective for client side work. Anyway, Java is not likely to die anytime soon.

You may also want to try GlassFish. Updated version of the Java EE 5 SDK was released toady. It is free. Sun's Application Server (9.0 Update 1 Patch 1) based on Project Glassfish is included in the SDK. It contains a performance bugfix that enables record-breaking price/performance on the application tier with SPECjAppServer result of 521.42 JOPS@Standard - see Scott's latest blog for all the details.

You may also want to try GlassFish. Updated version of the Java EE 5 SDK was released toady. It is free. Sun's Application Server (9.0 Update 1 Patch 1) based on Project Glassfish is included in the SDK. It contains a performance bugfix that enables record-breaking price/performance on the application tier with SPECjAppServer result of 521.42 JOPS@Standard - see Scott's latest blog for all the details.

A big problem with regards to PHP vs. Java is that its awfully harder to get Java going in a server-side fashion on your box. Where you only need a simple Apache module for Java you'd need a product like the Tomcat server to get the best out of Java. Which, for a common user, means more trouble and overhead. Now you got 2 software products to configure which can make your life a lot harder.

When looking at the Java Enterprise Edition (EE5) you'll notice that it comes with its own application server called Glassfish, its even fully open sourced. However, even though its a lot easier to setup and tune Glassfish when compared to Tomcat (a nice spiffy web interface in which you can do everything vs. a limited administration interface and lots of manual editing of config files) its still making things too complex for common use. You still need at least 2 ports opened up (one for webserver, one for application server) or figure out a way how to start forwarding requests.

No more. A very good alternative for all this complexity is the Sun Java Webserver 7. Its not offcially released yet, this is the 3rd release candidate, but despite that its very useable. This is basicly a combination of both an extensive webserver which can easily compete with the likes of Apache and a java container (or "application server") fully embedded into the system. So you only need to worry about a single software product to setup both your web and application -server needs.

There is a little thing to keep in mind: when it comes to Java technology (EE5) then you'll notice that the Java webserver 7 is a little behind in some regards. The support for JSP, servlets, etc. doesn't keep up with the latest versions but supports standards (jsp, serlvets, jsf) which are one release or such behind. But that doesn't mean its functionality is any less than Tomcat or the Sun application server.

If you're now considering Java but looking up to maintaining 2 software products I'd definatly check this out. It runs on Windows, Linux and even Solaris (duh, as if that wasn't to be expected from Sun ;-)).

If all you want is to run LISP with Java's speed, JDK 1.6 doesn't really change anything for you. There have been LISP implemntations (here are a couple of options) for some time now.

What JSR-223 means is that it's now possible to integrate scripting languages into Java programs without having to use a project-specific API. As far as I can tell, the only LISP(ish) implementation that supports JSR-223 is SISC. This means that you can write your Java in such a way that you can very simply switch scripting language or framework without much modification to your Java code. It also means there is a standard way for scripting languages to interact with a running Java program. This is nice for anyone who wants to write a hybrid application where some parts naturally lend themselves to being implemented in Java and some parts don't.

https://openjdk.dev.java.net/source/browse/openjdk /hotspot/trunk/
https://openjdk.dev.java.net/source/browse/openjdk /compiler/trunk/

https://openjdk.dev.java.net/source/browse/openjdk /hotspot/trunk/
https://openjdk.dev.java.net/source/browse/openjdk /compiler/trunk/

The source code is here: https://openjdk.dev.java.net/hotspot/

The binary downloads are going to remain under that clickwrap; only the source code is GPL.

More information can be found at Chris Campbell's blog, but yes, graphics are much faster in JDK 6 especially with the OpenGL pipeline turned on, although they were hardly "slow" in JDK 5. Also, the JIT compiler has been largely reworked to improve codegen (especially with -server flag specified).

Another common complaint about Java UIs is that the dynamic loading/binding/compiling/optimizing makes things slow the first time anything is done, a little less slow the second time, then reasonably zippy from then on. So the longer you work in a Java app, the faster it gets. In any case, I code in Java IDEs all day long and they don't seem any slower than native apps.

OpenJDK project
Hotspot

Early 2007 we should see the class libs as well

OpenJDK project
Hotspot

Early 2007 we should see the class libs as well

Congratulations to all the hard working people at Sun, and those outside who contributed (I'm one of them).

I tend to get +5 for these kind of posts, so this time I'll post anonymously to prevent karma wh:

As usual, InfoQ has a nice writeup with good links.
Sun has a confusing number of portal sites for news and communities, but the two most lively ones are probably java.net and Planet JDK.

Remember that Java 6 is not GPL, the decision to go GPL came too late in the development phase, only JDK7 is GPL. But you can get JDK6 and JDK7 is under the Research Licence from Subversion, a good blog with info about how and where is here.

Congratulations to all the hard working people at Sun, and those outside who contributed (I'm one of them).

I tend to get +5 for these kind of posts, so this time I'll post anonymously to prevent karma wh:

As usual, InfoQ has a nice writeup with good links.
Sun has a confusing number of portal sites for news and communities, but the two most lively ones are probably java.net and Planet JDK.

Remember that Java 6 is not GPL, the decision to go GPL came too late in the development phase, only JDK7 is GPL. But you can get JDK6 and JDK7 is under the Research Licence from Subversion, a good blog with info about how and where is here.

You mean from: http://download.java.net/openjdk/jdk7/, of course. It is the GPL'd source.

Never used it personally but saw references multiple times. You might want to read more about it HERE.

They are still widely in use, but if you are up-to-date in Java web application technologies, you are probably aware that JSP is dead. This is not a troll. JSP is rapidly being pushed out by alternatives like Facelets (which is used to define JavaServer Faces views), Tapestry, and Wicket. All of these are XML, disallow any logic in the view (thus encouraging proper MVC), and do not require a mountain of boilerplate code to extend. Why anyone would use JSP these days is totally beyond my understanding. Confusing and hard to maintain, JSP is rapidly diminishing and releasing a new library targeting it is like announcing some great new technology for Windows 95.

I, for one welcome our new Duke overlord.

Well, he has been open sourced too, so there really is no escaping!

This old timer (who turned down a chance to help develop a 32 Bit UCSD p-system back in the old days) is looking forward to banging on the VM code. Haven't done any serious hacking on byte code interps since the 80's (grins).

Seriously, open sourcing Java means that anyone with a serious itch to scratch (need a really compact VM?) can think about playing with it. Just like Unix, just when we thought it was dead...

check out: https://openjdk.dev.java.net/

Andy Allen.

Maybe as open source software people will be able to look at it and ask *why* does it have to take up so much memory to do such simple jobs? Compare for example Azureus (in Java) to bittorrent (in Python).

You have been allowed to look at the code for many years. It is not like there is some easily fixed bug, I think it has more to do with the them spending more time on stability and getting more speed. Sun engineers have been working hard on the memory use issue for a while now. For instance, in the upcoming Java 6 they moved away from memory mapping whole jars, and instead only mmaps the file "central directory" and read in the rest of the file only as needed.

Also, they appearently liked what Ethan Nicholas wrote so much they hired him to work on a minimal kernel version of Java. See also JSR 270 and JSR 277 which for the first time will allow removing parts of java, and if they are needed later, dynamically loaded at runtime. So you can have server java without including AWT/Swing/3D/Media, and desktop Java without xml parsing etc.

Maybe as open source software people will be able to look at it and ask *why* does it have to take up so much memory to do such simple jobs? Compare for example Azureus (in Java) to bittorrent (in Python).

You have been allowed to look at the code for many years. It is not like there is some easily fixed bug, I think it has more to do with the them spending more time on stability and getting more speed. Sun engineers have been working hard on the memory use issue for a while now. For instance, in the upcoming Java 6 they moved away from memory mapping whole jars, and instead only mmaps the file "central directory" and read in the rest of the file only as needed.

Also, they appearently liked what Ethan Nicholas wrote so much they hired him to work on a minimal kernel version of Java. See also JSR 270 and JSR 277 which for the first time will allow removing parts of java, and if they are needed later, dynamically loaded at runtime. So you can have server java without including AWT/Swing/3D/Media, and desktop Java without xml parsing etc.

Maybe as open source software people will be able to look at it and ask *why* does it have to take up so much memory to do such simple jobs? Compare for example Azureus (in Java) to bittorrent (in Python).

You have been allowed to look at the code for many years. It is not like there is some easily fixed bug, I think it has more to do with the them spending more time on stability and getting more speed. Sun engineers have been working hard on the memory use issue for a while now. For instance, in the upcoming Java 6 they moved away from memory mapping whole jars, and instead only mmaps the file "central directory" and read in the rest of the file only as needed.

Also, they appearently liked what Ethan Nicholas wrote so much they hired him to work on a minimal kernel version of Java. See also JSR 270 and JSR 277 which for the first time will allow removing parts of java, and if they are needed later, dynamically loaded at runtime. So you can have server java without including AWT/Swing/3D/Media, and desktop Java without xml parsing etc.

And here, the OpenJDK project.

Thanks Sun. You're earning a lot more cred in my book.

And here, the OpenJDK project.

Thanks Sun. You're earning a lot more cred in my book.

Some more articles I have found, with some substance to them:
InfoQ, also mentions Glassfish.
eWeek.

There is also going to be a official webcast about this by Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green 9.30 a.m. PT.

In related news, apparently Project Looking Glass, the 3d desktop, is likely to be included in the Ubuntu Feisty release.

I happen to use Linux, OSX and Windows, and the number one annoyance for me is a lack of clear "native-looking" GUI or OpenGL toolkit offering that is reachable by scripting languages like Perl and Python.

How about DirectX 9.0 uses .NET in places, and it is a PERFORMANCE graphics library? Port part of OpenGL to JAVA and see how well that works for you...

The Java BluePrints web site has guidelines on using Ajax and Java: http://java.sun.com/blueprints/ajax.html It presents guidelines on using Ajax with the Java EE 5 and J2EE 1.4 SDK. The Java EE 5 sample code has been tested with Sun's open source application server (http://glassfish.dev.java.net/) -Larry Freeman Manager, Java BluePrints Sun Microsystems

There is no way to allow the server to initiate a connection to a client.

Wrong. Read up on Comet request processing. For Jetty, for Tomcat, and for Glassfish.

Windows Vista Compatibility: http://weblogs.java.net/blog/chet/archive/2006/10/ java_on_vista_y.html