GNU Christmas Gift: Free Eclipse

Mark Wielaard writes "Your friendly neighbourhood GNU did it again. A year ago IBM made much noise about placing $40 million of its software tools under a free software license. Technically these tools, called Eclipse, are great for developing (java) software. There was only one catch, it was build on top of the proprietary java platform. This made it useless for the Free Software community. Luckily the GNU project has two projects that come to the rescue. GNU Classpath, core libraries for java, and gcj, the GNU Compiler for Java. We are now able to run Eclipse on a completely free platform! It is not yet complete, but you can already edit, compile and browse CVS with it. And since Eclipse uses GTK+ it also looks very nice. I setup a page with instructions on how to get this working so you can help us make it work even better or just so you can view a couple of nice screenshots."

Comments

I'm glad...

[Randolpho]

... that Eclipse is getting more "air time" on Slashdot. It's an outstanding IDE in its own right; the tools used to build it that you can use yourself (like SWT) are mere icing on the cake.

Re:I'm glad...

[MillionthMonkey]

...I think that Borland's Jbuilder IDE it's the best so far. It's slower than eclipse, but it offers much more features. And ... i'm so used to it :) ....

Please tell me you don't use JBuilder's Designer. We had a developer who liked to use it a lot. He stopped a year and a half ago, and we're still mopping up the damage! Everything looks like

flowLayout1 = new FlowLayout();
label2 = new Label();
panel3.add(button8);
panel6.add(panel4);
label2.setText("Welcome!");
panel7.setLayout(borderLayout6);

and it goes on and on like this for a couple hundred lines! With not a single local variable in sight- JBuilder declares them all as instance fields! Oy! Unless you keep these window classes tightly segregated from the manually edited code, and ONLY touch them with the Designer, they become unmaintainable monstrosities. Adding a single button or textfield is inordinately painful. As for changing the layout- you might as well do a rewrite.

I've become good at deobfuscating JBuilder's crap. First remove the 30 BorderLayout fields, FlowLayout fields, etc. Then gradually rename the "panel8", "button3", to sensible names, and remove redundant ones as you find them. Then get some graph paper out, and go slowly through the jbInit() method until you see what's going on. This will let you get rid of 90% of the instance fields in the class.

Layout code is tedious, but there's no excuse for not doing it manually unless you're not worried about maintainability. In fact, one thing I like about IntelliJ IDEA is the lack of a GUI designer.

Re:I'm glad...

[tolan-b]

yeah, jbuilder is like dreamweaver for java, it's horrible. it all seems great at first, 'oh look, this wizard will build all my EJBs for me straight from my database schema' (actually, that is quite cool), then you actually get round to looking at the code after playing for a bit, and you realise that it's turned into spaghetti.

also, apart from being slow, jbuilder just generally comes across as bloaty to me. i mean, i'm sure _someone_ wants all that stuff, but it goes too far for me. while i was using it, i seemed to spend almost as much time wading through the docs as i did working.

aaalso.. it's really doesn't seem to like most open source stuff. unsuprisingly it's heavily biased toward the commercial appservers (i work with j2ee).

eclipse however, is fast (relatively), simple in terms of interface and finding the actual functionality you need, and has superb support for open and closed type plugins. cvs works nicely, ant works nicely, junit integration is great, and so on.

to me jbuilder is everything that CLI junies hate about GUIs, whereas eclipse is how it should be, minimum bloat, maximum functionality. ;)

Re:I'm glad...

[MillionthMonkey]

The problems you mention aren't JBuilder's fault, you just had a lazy developer !
The default visibility of generated variables is a project configuration setting (at least it is in JBuilder 4, I can't imagine they've taken it away in later versions).

Thanks for telling me that; now I have to strangle him! Actually he's the original developer of the project, and he's the CEO of the company now, so I shouldn't complain too much about his code. He was trained as a physicist and can hold 15 things in his head at once so some of his stuff is absolutely incomprehensible. The parts of his code that were written by JBuilder are almost a pleasure to work with in comparison!

As for the default naming (jLabel3 etc): how do you suppose the designer would figure out the correct name on its own ? As far as I know there's no mind-reading plugin yet. Just rename the thing after dropping it on your design area using the property editor.

Sigh... Can't it at least suggest memorable default names, like panelFred and buttonBarney? I've never seen anyone who used a visual designer even bother to change the names of those damn things. When they're messing with the designer, they often have it in their head that nobody will ever have to edit the code by hand anyway, so they don't care if it looks like diarrhea.

If you manually write all GUI code you can probably avoid a few variable declarations for layout managers if you always use their default settings (e.g. myPanel.setLayout(new BorderLayout())). But runtime this doesn't make a difference, the layout manager is still in scope for the entire lifetime of the instance.

Yeah, at runtime from the JVM's point of view the scope is no different. But I don't care about the JVM's point of view. From my point of view, it's in my face! Which code would you rather maintain? This:

myPanel.setLayout(new BorderLayout())

or this:

BorderLayout borderLayout4 = new BorderLayout();
...
...
myPanel = new Panel();
...
...
borderLayout4.setHgap(5);
...
...
myPanel.setLayout(borderLayout4);
...
...
borderLayout4.setVgap(5);

Imagine all this stuff repeated for ten BorderLayouts, two GridLayouts, and four FlowLayouts! With everything mixed up with and on top of everything else! And you should see what it can do with a GridBagLayout! Holy crap! Code like that should just be sent to India.

JBuilder's designer hasn't given me any problems.

Actually, it's pretty impressive how much manual editing of the source file is tolerated by the damn thing. It even incorporated a custom layout manager we wrote with no problems, and does a passable job with our custom components. But as time goes by, more and more human-generated changes creep in- and eventually the code gets so far from what JBuilder wrote that it gets hopelessly confused and the Designer won't work anymore. If you use one of these things, by all means try to keep the classes segregated from the manually edited code, for the benefit of both the Designer and the other human developers. But by all means do not assume from the outset that you will be successful in doing so, because chances are you won't be.

About the only thing we have to change manually is a call to a GridBagConstraints constructor that didn't exist before JDK 1.2, since we have to be Mac OS 9 compatible.

Ah, so you know the nightmare I live with every day! Damn that Mac OS 9! We're supporting it for six more months and after that I can use all the Java 2 methods that pop up in the autocomplete! Woo hoo!

sun and java

[jon787]

I wish sun would just open up the java libraries, that would make open source java developement even easier.

Re:sun and java

[nomadic]

Because developing and giving it away for free just isn't enough.

And the president and board of directors should come to our houses and mow the lawn every Sunday afternoon.

Re:sun and java

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I wish sun would just open up the java libraries

...and while I'm at it, I wish I had a pony.

Re:sun and java

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I know I'm speaking the truth when immature and profane individuals such as yourself get so very up in arms when they hear it. Thanks for making my day.

Re:sun and java

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Seems like you missed the other word I used: immature. Profanity is most certainly not "more eloquent and elegant," but when one couples it with that degree of immaturity of expression, one's words say far more about oneself than one might think.

He instead attempts to turn it around and pretend that he is "superior" somehow

Thus spake "Trolling4Dollars."

Oh, "Trolling," you're nothing if not good for a laugh.

Free Software Community

[lunartik]

A development tool that is built upon a non-open architecture is "useless" for the free software community? But a sort-of-working substitution remedies the problem?

Hmm.

Re:Free Software Community

[robbyjo]

I agree. This is sort of "purist" view.

When I looked at the patch they disable the default garbage collection. I guess that this will cause memory blow ups when loading huge projects. I suppose that the original binary with Sun's Java is the best bet for production machines. Heck, I'm perfectly happy with Eclipse's current Linux GTK+ binary.

Re:Free Software Community

[MAXOMENOS]

You're probably better off with an IBM JVM, since they tend to be slightly better quality.

Then again, I haven't tried Eclipse yet, so this is just a guess.

Re:Free Software Community

[Twirlip of the Mists]

If by "purist" you mean "radical fundamentalist," I'm right there with you.

I know I'm not the only Slashdotter who senses the irony of a community of people who supposedly stand for freedom declaring an entire platform to be useless because they find it politically unacceptable.

Re:Free Software Community

[robbyjo]

Well, I have a slight problem with IBM JVM in my Gentoo box. The response was slower IMHO and it trashes when compiling some classes of my project. With Sun's JVM everything's fine, though. Of course, the workaround would be to compile the problematic classes separately, but that sort of pain.

Re:Free Software Community

[Apreche]

I'm with you there. I've always used Sun for all my java codin' and I've never had a problem. If it aint broke, don't fix it.
I mean sure, I don't have the source code for it, but it's object oriented. If there's somethign I don't like I can write my own.
Like I would know how to edit, let alone write, code for a compiler!

Re:Free Software Community

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

The thing is that most people don't care about having their software "libre", especially when it's already "free" like beer and the license isn't full of Nazi restrictions.

Tim

Re:Free Software Community

[abe ferlman]

I know I'm not the only Slashdotter who senses the irony of a community of people who supposedly stand for freedom declaring an entire platform to be useless because they find it politically unacceptable.

Why must you slander us and belittle us?

"Politically unacceptable" is a poor substitute for "under a license that does not guarantee freedom from embracing and extending". It's not about politics, it's about learning a tool we can feel confident will continue to be around even if Microsoft buys Sun out in some dim future.

The platform is useless because the strings attached are too restrictive for those of us who think about the future of software development.

Radical fundamentalists would be the sort to smash the windows of Sun HQ or create cyber-havoc to achieve their political ends. You're smearing reasonable people who don't like Trojan gifts with a very broad brush, and I believe you owe us an apology.

Re:Free Software Community

[jbolden]

FSF doesn't stand for maxamizing individual freedom within a society of low collective freedoms but rather it standards for maxamizing collective freedom even at the expense of some individual freedoms. Sort of the difference between left anarchist and right anarchist economics.

Re:Free Software Community

[diaphanous]

I know I'm not the only Slashdotter who senses the irony of a community of people who supposedly stand for freedom declaring an entire platform to be useless because they find it politically unacceptable.

I think you should s/politically/ethically/ in the above statement. There is a difference between politics and ethics, and conflating them in the way you are doing is dishonest and empty rhetoric.

"Politics" has come to have a distasteful connotation, meaning roughly, "the arbitrary abuse of power": When the boss's lazy, incompetent protege is promoted ahead of a hard-working and competent individual, everyone complains about "office politics".This isn't the only meaning of "politics, its a special case. Politics is about who has power and how they use it. The reasons for choosing a particular arrangement of power or a particalular use of it can me ethically based, or not.

Anti-war and anti-abortion activists both have political ends in mind, but their reasons for their beliefs and actions is based in ethics. You might disagree with the policies they advocate, or disagree with the reasoning that leads them to these policies, or disagree with their entire system of ethics, but to represent their beliefs and actions as solely political would be dishonest.

Free software does have political implications: it rearranges the legal rights of copyright holders and software users. But free software advocates have ethical reasons for wanting to rearrange these rights in the exact same sense that anti-war and anti-abortion activists have an ethical base for wanting to change government policy.

You might think that ethics has nothing to do with software, and that which software to use should be decided on solely on technical merit. Obviously some people disagree. As stupid as you might find their position it's wrong to misrepresent their beliefs and reasoning.

~Phillip

Re:Free Software Community

[wheany]

I'm not sorry. Karma means nothing. It's just there to make Slashdot seem like a game.

Re:Free Software Community

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Why must you slander us and belittle us?

Well, come on. You do bring it on yourselves, don't you? All the high-minded talk of freedom and liberty just reeks of tall poppy syndrome. Even if your political goals weren't wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable, the "community" in general, and certain members of it in particular, think so much of themselves that being brought down a notch or two from time to time is good for them.

That said, though, let us not lose sight of the fact that your political goals are wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable.

"Politically unacceptable" is a poor substitute for "under a license that does not guarantee freedom from embracing and extending".

Actually, I think "politically unacceptable" describes the situation perfectly. Here we have a platform that is free for your use, without the sorts of BitKeeper-style restrictions that created such a stink a while back. The platform is ubiquitous and unrestricted, and generally considered to be appropriate for a wide variety of tasks. And yet you (you meaning the "community") refuse to use it for no other reason than that the people who built the platform do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property and source code licensing.

You may wrap it up in terms of "we want a tool that isn't under anybody's control," but the bottom line is that the concerns of the "community" aren't practical. They're ideological.

You're smearing reasonable people who don't like Trojan gifts with a very broad brush, and I believe you owe us an apology.

I am calling it like I see it. I don't think a reasonable person would conclude that Eclipse is "useless for the free software community" simply because it was built with and runs on Java. That is absolutely radical fundamentalism; it is based on the idea that anything that is not ideologically pure is "useless."

Now I didn't speak personally, and I intended no offense, but I will not be offering any apologies, either.

Re:Free Software Community

[abe ferlman]

Well, come on. You do bring it on yourselves, don't you?

No we most certainly do not.

All the high-minded talk of freedom and liberty just reeks of tall poppy syndrome. Even if your political goals weren't wrongheaded and your propaganda methods highly questionable, the "community" in general, and certain members of it in particular, think so much of themselves that being brought down a notch or two from time to time is good for them.

I don't get it, what is it about freedom you don't like? Again I hear slander without specifics. You're basically saying "quit whining about your freedom, you need to be put in your place," only less succinctly.

The platform is ubiquitous and unrestricted,

This is a lie, and it undermines what little non-insult argument you offer. The java platform is famously non-free, under the control of Sun rather than standards bodies.

no other reason than that the people who built the platform do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property and source code licensing.

Let's unpack this statement. First we have the insult:

do not subscribe to your views on intellectual property

Clearly, we don't care. Linus works for Transmeta and uses Bitkeeper, but the GPL keeps the Linux kernel free no matter what Linus's politics are. It's not Sun's views on IP we care about, it's the license under which the gift software is offered. What you are trying to do is smear the free software community (who concern themselves with providing free alternatives) with warez kiddiez who have no respect for laws they disagree with. If the free software community didn't respect those laws even as they disagreed with them, they'd just pirate all the software rather than build alternatives. You are trying to beat on a man very much made of straw here.

Second:
and source code licensing.

That's true. We don't like the license so we won't use it. You are trying very hard to make this seem unreasonable, but it is not.

I don't think a reasonable person would conclude that Eclipse is "useless for the free software community" simply because it was built with and runs on Java. That is absolutely radical fundamentalism; it is based on the idea that anything that is not ideologically pure is "useless."

Of course not, you're clearly not reasonable and have no idea what a reasonable person would care about.

The idea that being concerned what license your software runs under makes you a 'radical fundamentalist' is pure slander. It's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who cares about what license their software uses sound like a terrorist. There is no other purpose to these terms, and they are not the terms reasonable people use to discuss their differences.

Now I didn't speak personally,

Ah, but now you have responded to my post personally, and accused me of 'radical fundamentalism' and an obsession with 'ideological purity', and I have taken it personally.

You are coming from the perspective that a little proprietary software is ok. I understand your perspective, and I can see why you might have it. But you seem to think that anyone who has a different perspective on the appropriateness of proprietary software is a raving lunatic, and for this I fault you and continue to demand an apology.

Re:Free Software Community

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I don't get it, what is it about freedom you don't like? Again I hear slander without specifics.

Oh, man. This could take days. But the short answer is that the FSF does not stand for freedom. They stand for strictly limited freedom. They stand for "freedom except." And yet they persist in calling it "free." That's deceptive. But I really have little to say to you on this specific part of the discussion that I haven't already said in this extremely lengthy and, surprisingly, civil thread. If you want to know what I think about the FSF and what they call "freedom," please click over and read what I wrote there.

The java platform is famously non-free, under the control of Sun rather than standards bodies.

You're kind of proving my point here, whether you realize it or not. You have called out the fact that Java is defined by a company instead of by a committee as being a sign that it is "non-free." That smacks of the "ideologically impure" thing I mentioned earlier. Because the Java specification is not defined by a committee, the Java platform is impure, so all software that runs on Java is impure. And because Eclipse runs on Java, it is "useless for the free software community." This is, as I said before, an example of radical ideological fundamentalism.

It's not Sun's views on IP we care about, it's the license under which the gift software is offered.

Okay, then for the purposes of our conversation I retract what I said about the FSF's disagreements with Sun over IP. Forget I said that.

What you are trying to do is smear the free software community (who concern themselves with providing free alternatives) with warez kiddiez who have no respect for laws they disagree with.

Wha? I don't understand how you jumped from what I said to that conclusion. I didn't say a thing about software piracy. If you're going to argue with me-- for I do love a spirited debate-- at least have the courtesy to disagree with things that I actually say, if you please.

We don't like the license so we won't use it. You are trying very hard to make this seem unreasonable, but it is not.

What I consider to be unreasonable is the apparent "fruit of a poisoned tree" doctrine that is being applied here. As I said before, Java is considered ideologically unacceptable-- this is a vital distinction; not unacceptable on technological or practical terms, but purely ideological ones-- so all software that runs on Java is also unacceptable.

It is possible to release software for the Java platform under the GPL. It is possible to build software with Eclipse and then release it under the GPL. So the objection here has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. It's purely ideological, and I consider that to be unreasonable.

Of course not, you're clearly not reasonable and have no idea what a reasonable person would care about.

Wow, this is getting better and better.

It's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who cares about what license their software uses sound like a terrorist.

Actually, it's an attempt to make it sound like anyone who considers a tool "useless" not because of its license, or because of the license of the platform on which it runs, but because of the specification of the platform on which it runs sound like a radical fundamentalist. Which is precisely what I said. If you jumped from "radical fundamentalist" to "terrorist," then I submit that you may have been watching too much television, and that you might want to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

Ah, but now you have responded to my post personally, and accused me of 'radical fundamentalism' and an obsession with 'ideological purity', and I have taken it personally.

Well... okay. Yes. If the statement, "[The fact that] it was build on top of the proprietary Java platform... made it useless for the free software community," accurately describes your opinions, then yes, I am accusing you of radical fundamentalism. I am accusing you of being more concerned with ideology than with software, free or otherwise. Most importantly, I am accusing you of cutting off your own nose to spite your face.

If this offends you, I am sincerely sorry. I do not mean to attack your character, hurt your feelings, or insult your person. I mean only to indict your ideas in the court of Slashdot public opinion.

You are coming from the perspective that a little proprietary software is ok.

Actually, just to make things perfectly clear here, I am coming from the perspective that all proprietary software is okay. I disagree most wholeheartedly with the FSF's most fundamental assumption, which is that proprietary software, and by extension all intellectual property, is a bad thing. Just so there's no confusion about where I stand on the issues, you see.

But you seem to think that anyone who has a different perspective on the appropriateness of proprietary software is a raving lunatic, and for this I fault you and continue to demand an apology.

Whether you, sir, are a raving lunatic or not remains to be seen. You may fault me for whatever you like, and you may demand whatever you like. As I said before, no apology will be forthcoming.

Re:Free Software Community

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I may very well be a self-righteous prick; it's hard to tell from in here, but I cheerfully acknowledge the possibility. You see, it doesn't change the fact that I'm right.

On another subject, though, if you're going to go making recommendations to the readers of this thread to add or remove friends based on your opinions, the very least you could do would be to post under your own name instead of hiding behind that "post anonymously" button.

What are you afraid of?

Re:Free Software Community

[abe ferlman]

Here's the short version of my reply: Software freedom is a practical concern because giving anyone ownerhsip of a critical piece of your software toolchain puts you at their mercy, and this is a completely separate question from whether the ip laws that allow people to own other people's ideas are legitimate.

They stand for "freedom except." And yet they persist in calling it "free." That's deceptive.

The whole notion of absolute freedom breaks down when you consider that every freedom exercised that involves more than one person constrains the actions of the other in some way. The FSF's notion of freedom tries to make some good choices about how to provide freedom for everyone most effectively in the tradition of J.S. Mill. That is, you are free to do anything you like but restrict the freedoms of others. It's the software equivalent of "your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose."

You have called out the fact that Java is defined by a company instead of by a committee as being a sign that it is "non-free." That smacks of the "ideologically impure" thing I mentioned earlier.

It has nothing to do with "purity", it's the fact that they can take our right to use the platform away at any time they choose; they can "pull the rug out from under us" so to speak. It's not abstract ideology, it's practical management of licensing risk. But if your understanding of "purity" is anything like your understanding of "freedom"...

I didn't say a thing about software piracy.

You didn't have to. What you said was that the reason we won't use Sun's Java is that we don't agree with their view of IP. What this implies is that we are all IP thieves and that Sun is on the right side of the law. If you didn't mean it that way, I accept your clarification and withdraw my complaint. But if I may compliment you for just a moment, as much as I disagree with your claims and apparent motivations, you do not seem the sort to waste a phrase.

not unacceptable on technological or practical terms, but purely ideological ones--

No, it is unacceptable on practical terms. The platform can be broken or taken away, so it's impractical to use it.

at least have the courtesy to disagree with things that I actually say, if you please.

If you'd stop implying so much more than you say explicitly, this would be a very short conversation. But you're using words and phrases that imply more than they say, and I'm simply exposing those instances- taking issue with what you *actually said*, rather than what you claim you meant to express.

Which is precisely what I said. If you jumped from "radical fundamentalist" to "terrorist," then I submit that you may have been watching too much television, and that you might want to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

It becomes more and more clear to me that you have no interest in discussion. Your words were deliberate and hurtful, and the association is obvious.

I disagree most wholeheartedly with the FSF's most fundamental assumption, which is that proprietary software, and by extension all intellectual property, is a bad thing. Just so there's no confusion about where I stand on the issues, you see.

Here we are again. Distortion. The FSF needs an IP system to guarantee that people have the right to actually use the software that's produced. The FSF insists on the preservation of attribution in the GPL. It's important that credit go where it belongs. However, it is not important that we keep people from building on the ideas of others, and at a minimum, it is important that those who want to share their own work and ideas freely be allowed to without interference from those who do not want to share.

But most importantly, who the hell cares what the FSF's feelings about IP are? The point is that practically, using software that is not free to use, alter, and redistribute has *practical* implications in that the continued existence of any project built on a limited platform is at the mercy of the owner of that platform. And what you call "ideological purity" is actually the well justified fear that Sun's corporate interest may (will) one day conflict with the interests of developers and end users, and that this corporation, having gained a foothold into an otherwise free system will pull the plug on all the derivative free projects that didn't worry about the terms of their licensing.

Re:Free Software Community

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You still haven't answered the questions put to you in the above mentioned threads.

Which questions would those be?

Re:Free Software Community

[poot_rootbeer]

That certainly says something about the type of developer that doesn't adhere to the the simple philosophy of "use the best tool for the job", doesn't it?

Re:Free Software Community

[stikves]

You DO have the source for it.

Most of the classes come with their source. Just look at your %JAVAPATH%/src.jar. The exception is JNI clasess (native classes).

However, the license is much like "SHARED SOURCE" and you must NEVER look at it, if you want to contribute to GNU java projects.

Re:Free Software Community

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Depends on how you define "platform". Java is a language. Many implementations exist and there are ongoing efferts to implement Free-as-in-speech Java. I sense no irony but rather integrity in the actions of those developers. Its true that to some the issue is related to a right way vs. a wrong way to do things. It is closer to a religious than a political unacceptability. Others are more pragmatic. Yet still, I don't think the desire to fashion a better world (at least in terms of software systems) is a function of politics.

Re:Free Software Community

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Depends on how you define "platform". Java is a language.

Not exactly. Java is also a runtime environment, a just-in-time compiler, a virtual machine, and a set of class libraries. That's why it's a platform rather than just a language.

Yet still, I don't think the desire to fashion a better world (at least in terms of software systems) is a function of politics.

Two things. First, it is absolutely a function of politics. Second, the FSF's idea of a better world is unbelievably wrong-headed.

combo

[dirvish]

This is great. Hopefully Microsoft will succesfully be forced to integrate Java. The combination could help Java smother .net

Keep the zealotry to yourself

[Sanity]

Hopefully Microsoft will succesfully be forced to integrate Java. The combination could help Java smother .net

I am getting really tired of Open Source zealots criticizing .NET just because Microsoft created it. I am very familiar with both .NET and Java, and IMHO .NET is a better architecture.

.NET will soon have at least one Open Source implementation, and Microsoft has actually supported these efforts.

People authoritively claim that Microsoft will use patents to kill these efforts if they become competitive, but there is no evidence to support this paranoia, and in-fact Microsoft does not have a histroy of abusing patents in this manner (unlike another company I could mention).

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[the eric conspiracy]

People authoritively claim that Microsoft will use patents to kill these efforts if they become competitive, but there is no evidence to support this paranoia, and in-fact Microsoft does not have a histroy of abusing patents in this manner

Incorrect in every regard.

Microsoft has already used patents to attack open source projects, and has also used patent licenses to attack the GPL. Microsoft's highest executives have also stated publically that they intend to use patents against certain open source projects.

Examples

- no translation of ASF, WMA and WMV files to any other format.
- patent licenses granted only to non-GPL software
CIFS implementations
- royalty fees on file sharing extensions to SMB in Win2K and WinXP
- Nasty letters to certain Linux kernel developers working on NTFS support.

The Halloween documents also mention the possibility that Microsoft may use Patents to attack OS endeavors.

We also have comments from Mr. Ballmer regarding .Net:

Responding to questions about the opening-up of the .NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a "Common Language Runtime Implementation" for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was "intended only for academic use". Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free .NET implementationens such as Mono: "We have invested so many millions in .NET, we have so many patents on .NET, which we want to cultivate."

And we also have this:

Asked by CollabNet CTO Brian Behlendorf whether Microsoft will enforce its patents against open source projects, Mundie replied, "Yes, absolutely." An audience member pointed out that many open source projects aren't funded and so can't afford legal representation to rival Microsoft's. "Oh well," said Mundie. "Get your money, and let's go to court."

Any statement that Microsoft has not and is not likely to enforce patents in these areas is just not backed up by the history, or by public statements by MS senior executives.

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[p00ya]

.NET resolves many of the features that are inherently lacking in java imho.
Take a look at a comparative analysis of c# to java and c++.

some features I particularly liked: delegates (and resulting event support), properties and indexers, and collection management.

Perhaps you should look at the c# and .NET specs before you flame people for not providing a comprehensive list to supplement everything they say, instead of hiding in your anti-ms hole.

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[the eric conspiracy]

some features I particularly liked: delegates (and resulting event support), properties and indexers, and collection management.

I don't particularly see these as ARCHITECTURAL advantages, rather I see these as arguable syntactical advantages. And I don't agree that these are necessarily advantages. For example, let's take Properties.

Properties give you the ability to access mutators and accessors as if they were fields. Now that might seem to be an improvement, I would say that it actully muddies the syntactic distinction between fields and methods, making the code less readable. This is a bad thing IMHO.

To me an architectural advantage is a lot more fundamental; for example a something in the design that makes implementation of a certain design pattern easy. And to be honest this is something I am having difficulty with in ASP.NET. For example, ASP.NET and its framework make it very difficult to implement MVC in ASP.Net cleanly.

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[Sanity]

Any statement that Microsoft has not and is not likely to enforce patents in these areas is just not backed up by the history, or by public statements by MS senior executives.

I said that Microsoft didn't have a history of abusing patents - I did not mean that Microsoft had no patents, nor that they had never enforced a patent - nor even that they liked Open Source.

Rather, I was referring to the particularly dastardly practice of "submarine" patents, encouraging people to code to a standard before springing a patent on the world and forcing those that have adopted the standard to pay up.

For example, Microsoft submitted .NET to the ECMA as a standard, something that Sun has not yet done with Java (they tried but couldn't agree). In the openness stakes, that puts .NET ahead of Java IMHO - and those that claim that Java is automatically more trustworthy than .NET have failed to make their case.

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[manyoso]

Your criticism of C# style Properties are unwarranted, IMHO. Properties are just another feature that add some nice abstraction with fields and also offer some syntactical sugar. Yes, people can misuse them, but they can also be useful. I haven't found code to be any less readable btw. You should try them out and see for yourself. I like them ;)

I think the delegates/events are a definite ARCHITECTURAL advantage as well as the Common Type System. The CLR is another advantage because it provides generic support for many other languages. Then you have the bytecode which offers an improvement for JITting because it was designed after a whole lot of research was done on this subject over the last few years. Also, the native generation is a nice feature.

Simply put, coming from a Java background I've found C#/.NET to be a very nice improvement. It just feels good to develop with it and it benefits from being new and shiny without all of the cruft that Java has built up over the years. That being said, I'd love for SUN to get onboard and create a Java# for the ECMA specs or perhaps to one up the C#/.NET standard. In the end I am both a developer with practical wishes/opinions and a Free Software advocate with philosophical needs. .NET meets the technical wishes/opinions of my developer nature better than Java at this time and the advent of Mono and DotGNU satisfies my requirements for Free Software.

BTW, I want to add that I approached Mono/DotGNU/.NET with an extremely skeptical eye and a protective feeling for my beloved Java. To my amazement I found a really nice framework that was a joy to work with. I am still skeptical of Microsoft and in particular the patent grousing that Ballmer et al, have been spewing. I just don't think this is a good enough reason not to use/develop it. As I've said elsewhere, the entire world of Free Software and all FS projects are endangered by software patents. SAMBA, wine, GCJ, linux kernel ... all! So, it just is not a good reason for me. I also think the DotGNU folks are smart to hedge there bets by only doing the ECMA specs plus the Portable.NET C# compiler is capable of producing Java bytecode and will support the upcoming bytecode for Parrot (Perl's new runtime). Anyways, Cheers!

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[dirvish]

It is not exactly Zealotry (I am typing this on a Windows 98 machine). It is more common sense, you know the kind of common sense that all those corporations and states used when they sued Microsoft. It worries me when I hear about a company that has a huge majority of the browser market (even though mozilla is better), has a nice chunk of the server software market, has control of the desktop workstation operating systems market, has a big hand in the server OSes, etc etc etc now wants to control the development market. Throw in the fact the rumors about an acquisition of Macromedia and it gets scary. No corporation should have that much control. Computers, the internet and software are everywhere and such vertical integration by one company should be avoided, especially when it comes to such an important technology.

I have heard .net is great from more sources than just you but I would rather use another dev tool (even if some people claim it is inferior) than see control of every aspect of the the technology by one corporation...even if they aren't evil.

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[the eric conspiracy]

I think the delegates/events are a definite ARCHITECTURAL advantage as well as the Common Type System. The CLR is another advantage because it provides generic support for many other languages.

Well, Delegates and Events have been severely criticized by some language purists, so I don't think that you can point to them as being a clear cut advantage.

I am not sure that the CLR is an architectural advantage, either. Sure, it lets you write in a variety of languages, but does it give you the abilitiy to express something different in each language? Not really, because you are limited by the underlying model as to what you can implement. The same applies to the CTS. In fact, there is a major criticism out there that the CTS/CLR has forced every language ported to .Net to lose some major features that make that language distinctive from other languages. It's sort of a Procrustean bed. Everybody can lie down on it, but watch out! Anything that doesn't fit has to get cut off.

To be honest, I've found the CLR multi-language support to be quite annoying from another perspective. I want to write in C#, but the fact of the matter is that I've found a large percentage of code examples to be in VB.NET. This is a real PITA. To me this multilanguage thing is more like a marketing bullet point than something that is going to help me as a programmer.

Here is a prediction: In the long run software program managers are going to grow to HATE the multilanguage support in .Net. It's promulgating a raft of standards of expression where unification is important.

There are also some things in .Net that I have real problems with - the first being lack of checked exceptions. To me this is a BIG issue and will cause a lot of software reliability problems. Uncaught exceptions are the main reason that Sun is adding generics to Java 1.5 - and here we have Microsoft with .Net with a hole in it wide enough to drive a fleet through.

Sure, I think that .Net is an interesting effort. It has some innovations that may turn out to be good ideas. But architectural superior? I haven't seen any evidence that it is.

Maybe in 3-4 years when we have had a chance to digest it, and there is real experience with implementation of the standard body of design patterns on it we might have some evidence that .Net actually does have architectural advantages over Java. But I haven't seen any such evidence yet.

Re:Keep the zealotry to yourself

[axlrosen]

There are also some things in .Net that I have real problems with - the first being lack of checked exceptions. To me this is a BIG issue and will cause a lot of software reliability problems.

There's a lot of debate about this - e.g. see here.

Uncaught exceptions are the main reason that Sun is adding generics to Java 1.5

Well, generics reduce *uncaught* exceptions, but that has nothing to do with *unchecked* exceptions. A language w/o generics can have class-cast exceptions thrown at runtime, and a language with generics doesn't have this problem, whether that language has checked exceptions or not. Sun adding generics to Java 1.5 has nothing to do with checked exceptions.

Not Ready? Its all about the plugins.

[Apoptosis66]

I am not sure I understand the "Not Quite Ready" comment. I have been using Eclipse as my main IDE for nearly a year and I love it. Eclipse is just the framework to build the IDE you desire. Eclipse is complete, there are just some pluggins that aren't ready yet, however they are comming along very fast. Just last night I started using the Lomboz J2EE pluggin and so far I have been pretty impressed. http://www.objectlearn.com/ Also, I get all my plugins from: http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/ I might not be up on all the politics of programming, but I know I didn't pay for Eclipse and no one has asked me for anything to use it. So it appears pretty damn free to me. I recommend Eclipse to everyone.

Java on the client-side needs this to compete...

[javabandit]

As someone who has written several Swing based applications, I can say that Java sorely needs this kind of a shot in the arm for the client-side to be even remotely feasible.

Up to this point, Sun has ignored the client-side, and rightly so. Because Microsoft and MFC rules on the client side (on Win32). Sun exploited the server-side breach that Microsoft had ignored.

But now, Java needs to become a viable alternative to C++ based programming on the client-side. And the only way this is going to happen is for Java to have some kind of a native GUI presence on each platform it runs on. This is where IBM and the SWT libraries come in.

Currently, the SWT libraries are still immature. The Eclipse platform itself is still immature. But they will get better and better. I predict that the SWT libraries will not only get quite expansive... but include things other than GUI widgets/toolkits.

If IBM plays their cards right (and so far they have)... I can see them actually introducing more Java extension libraries for other things that Sun did a terrible job on. Collections. Better native threading model. Better I/O model. The list goes on and on.

Personally, I would have no problem with writing a Java application that only imported IBM extension libraries. As long as they were well-written, and performed well.

Sun really needs to get on the ball here. The time has come to open-source Java. Let the developers do with the language what needs to be done to bring it to the next level.

Otherwise... companies like IBM are going to do it anyways. Just using extension libraries. If Microsoft was smart, they'd have done five years ago what IBM is doing now. Microsoft would own Java on the client-side if they would have played it right.

Re:Why should I use Eclipse instead of Emacs + JDE

[Chainsaw]

Well, why do you use Emacs instead of vi? Or ed? Or writing to disk using very, very small magnets?

Just use Anjuta

[DuckWing]

Why is there a big deal about this, other than the promise by IBM and making good that promise? Anjuta DevStudio, which is one of the best GUI IDE's on Linux IMHO, supports Java. I personally havean't gotten into Java, so I could care less about this, but Anjuta is fully GPL'd already.

Re:Just use Anjuta

[bartok]

The point of Eclipse is that it's written in Java and is therefore cross-platform. Eclipse is also a java widget toolkit that's made to look like a native app on whatever platform it runs on.

The Eclipse framework serves the same purpose as Swing. The Eclipse project is much more than an IDE.

Waste of Effort

[kindofblue]

I think Eclipse is pretty damn good. If it could be sped up by precompiling critical parts using GCJ, and integrating with any good Java VM, then that would be great. However, reimplementing the entire (Java) API using "Free" code seems like an extraordinary waste of effort. Realistically, there would always be some mismatch between the official API and the free version, meaning that the Java API would be forked in a subtle way. That benefits Microsoft immensely.

I think that the Java libraries will be very difficult to control fully by Sun, because they do not have IBM and Oracle to push around. IBM will absolutely not be backed into a corner by one of their main competitors in hardware, Sun. Because of that, I'm not worried about the Java APIs turning into a controlled arena, as Microsoft has done with Windows.

Basically, I think the effort of the Open Source community, of those that like Java, would be much pretty spent on making GCJ integrate seemlessly with a compliant Java VM using JNI. GCJ could used to make a just-of-time optimizer. With C# and dotNet, I think there's an ahead-of-time compiler instead of a just-in-time compiler that can optimize the byte code for the target machine. Using GCJ/GCC, one could get that sort of performance boost, almost for free, if it were plugged into a compliant Java VM, meaning that it could integrate with DLL/DSOs using the Java Native Interface.

Anyway, I, for one, would probably not waste my time using a slightly out-of-date API, on a slightly behind-the-curve VM or compiler. (BTW, I'm a heavy user of emacs, perl, mozilla, etc.) The java API, language and VM still has a LOT of room for improvement. I hope developers would rather innovate and improve the java standard than to fork off a clone.

Re:Waste of Effort

[Anonymous Coward]

But they CAN'T innovate and improve on Java because Sun holds the ropes. I've been reading in Infoworld that Sun is looking to make more money from Java .. somehow .. and that worries me a little.

I'd like to see a Free clone of Java, and then a community develop around the clone to CHANGE it into a better language. For instance, I'd like to see templates ("generics") added to java. I'd like to see type-safe enums. I'd like to see some "syntactic sugar" to make programs easier to write and read (hello, iterators). I'd like to see a GNU/Java implementation that has all this stuff and more, but is still backwards compatible with Sun/Java.

I'd like to see native-code only Java. I'd like to see GTK+ bindings for Java. I'd like to see all the old library cruft cleared out of Java. Heck, I'd like to see Java pre-installed on Red Hat, without coming on a separate CD with a separate license and a crappy RPM that was made by Sun. I wish it was available on FreeBSD sooner. I wish a lot of stuff that's only possible or easy with third-party implementations.

Re:Waste of Effort

[kindofblue]

I'd like to see a lot of those things exactly. Generics are coming in the next java version, I think 1.5. It started out as a research project apart from Sun, named Pizza or maybe it was GJ (Generic Java), and then got folded in. Sun definately needs to relinquish more control to its community process.

Many of the features you describe could still be done by compiling a Java++ superset language into the same bytecode or by translating to java code, like AT&T's cfront did for the original C++. The native-only stuff could be done directly on the byte code, or using something like GCJ to optimize java/java++ to machine code. Way back in java 1.0, SGI had a tool called javat which did almost that. It translated bytecode into machine code, but was not good at optimizing it. That's where GCJ/GCC would be very handy, since there's a full optimizing compiler in it. But my point is that these examples could still be done with the existing Java VM architecture. Language features, alternative syntaxes, and optimizers don't require reimplementing everything from scratch. IBM's jikes compiler is a very fast java compiler (written in C/C++) that adheres strictly to the Sun specifications, but it is buggy as hell. Reimplementing these things is not trivial.

Anyway, I agree that rapid innovation is definately easiest when all the source is available. Mozilla, Linux, and emacs (in the 90's) are great examples of that. Rapid innovation is great for applications because the end-users can benefit immediately, and if something changes, then they can change their habits.

However, for languages and APIs, standardization is very important. Many things depend on them: Documentation, applications, example code, tutorials, third-party books, training seminars, university courses, etc. which are all in the realm of developers. Developers suffer when source trees, APIs, or software practices become needlessly fractured. HTML and the Netscape/Internet Explorer browser wars is a great example of how web developers were saddled with two camps of HTML and zillions of incompatible dialects and implementations. We are still burdened by incompatibilities from those rapid innovation cycles.

My ideal scenario would be that I could take JAR files from GNU, Apache, Borland, Oracle, IBM, etc. and mix them together and get an optimized precompiled (maybe native-only) executable. But some standardization mechanism is needed so they can all talk to each other, (unlike the horrible linking incompatibilities between all C++ compilers). It doesn't have to be Sun; maybe it could be Sun/IBM/ECMA/ANSI. But it will likely be some company, since non-profit standards bodies usually move very slowly. Linux, for instance, has been standardized for the corporate world by RedHat primarily, not the UnitedLinux group or even Linus (who's focus is the kernel).

The important consideration is that there is a limited set of developer resources, even with thousands of open-source community eyeballs. Microsoft is the prime competitor to java, and Sun, IBM, Apple, etc are not. They are closer to being corporate resources and allies. As long as they remain good supporters of a unified java and don't create obstacles to the future use of these APIs/VMs, then I don't see why we shouldn't use them as resources, and thereby build upon their work instead of duplicating it.

Re:Waste of Effort

[statusbar]

It was not a waste of effort, as primarily the patches done were done to improve gcj and classpath.

--jeff++

Re:Waste of Effort

[codealot]

Basically, I think the effort of the Open Source community, of those that like Java, would be much pretty spent on making GCJ integrate seemlessly with a compliant Java VM using JNI.

I doubt that it would be practical. JNI does a lot of bookkeeping and is doomed to be far slower than whatever internal calling convention a JVM uses. You'd lose whatever advantages native compilation may have.

I hope developers would rather innovate and improve the java standard than to fork off a clone.

How can they innovate that for which they have no source code? The free implementation must come first. First they make it complete, then make it fast, then make it better.

Re:Waste of Effort

[p3d0]

Yeah, Classpath is a waste of effort just like the GNU project duplicating UNIX was a waste of effort.

Re:Waste of Effort

[axlrosen]

For instance, I'd like to see templates ("generics") added to java. I'd like to see type-safe enums. I'd like to see some "syntactic sugar" to make programs easier to write and read (hello, iterators).

These 3 are all coming from Sun in JDK 1.5.

http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=14
http://jcp.o rg/en/jsr/detail?id=201

Old news

[DigitalDragon]

Sorry guys, but this is seriously old news.. You can't call this a Christmass gift or anything. Our company's been using it for a year already (with a free license) and I personally have developed couple of plugins for it.
Nevertheless, this is the best tool I've used, and really, thanks IBM for doing such a great and generous job. My point is - this is not really news, and have nothing to do with Christmass.
Cheers.

Re:Old news

[Tim Macinta]

Sorry guys, but this is seriously old news.. You can't call this a Christmass gift or anything. Our company's been using it for a year already (with a free license) and I personally have developed couple of plugins for it.

I think that the news that the author is referring to here is not about the release of Eclipse but that Eclipse can now be run using Gnu Classpath and gjc (which I doubt was the case a year ago). They are announcing this as a milestone for Classpath and gjc, not as a milestone for Eclipse. Eclipse just happens to be a hefty program that they are using as a test case, and its significance ends there. The significance of the announcement lies primarily with Classpath and gjc. That's my take on it anyway.

Re:Why should I use Eclipse instead of Emacs + JDE

[V.P.]

That was my reaction to IDEs in general, and for Java I was using Emacs+JDE for years.

Eclipse is an IDE without all the crap you usually associate with an IDE. JDE isn't bad, but it's nothing like Eclipse. Eclipse's debugging support in particular is way better than JDEs (which took me some hours to configure properly). Not to mention that Eclipse let's you do really neat things, like stop the debugger right before an exception was thrown, fix the bug, and continue with the debugging as if nothing had happened!

Re:What do you mean GNU present???

[XaXXon]

IBM was the one who released Eclipse source. GNU and certainly not that wacko crackpot RMS had nothing to do with it. Very misleading topic!!

Whoa! Whoa! and Whoa! there buddy. Speaking of crackpots, you've been smoking from yours a little too heavily.

This post has nothing to do with the fine work the folks at IBM have done on Eclipse. That's old news.

This article is about the GNU components that have been released to allow Eclipse to run with all Free components.

I know it's trendy to bash RMS, and the Slashdot editors, but let's save that for when they are actually doing stupid stuff.

keep your naiveness to yourself

[Kunta Kinte]

I am getting really tired of Open Source zealots criticizing .NET just because Microsoft created it.

Ok, because, we don't agree with your stance we're zealots now? Whatever happened to free software advocates?

I have lots of doubts with .NET because it's from Microsoft. I don't think my concerns are unfounded. They've done enough in the past, now they arouse my suspicion just by them twitching.

How many times does a person have to screw you over before you stop trusting them? Similarly how many times does a company have to resort to shady tactics before you decide that it's probably in their corporate culture to do so.

My arguements against .NET are not technical, other than I don't think it brings enough to the table to warrant much of interest. It's mostly that sooner or later MS will find a way to screw open source interest with it.

GCC vs GCJ?

[egg troll]

What's the difference between using GCC to compile ones Java apps, and using GCJ?

Useless to RMS, maybe

[Ghazgkull]

There was only one catch, it was build on top of the proprietary java platform. This made it useless for the Free Software community.

If you define the "Free Software community" as the zealotous 5% of free software users who refuse to use software that hasn't been blessed by RMS, you're right.

For the rest of us, Eclipse has been useful (and free and open source) for over a year.

Re:Useless to RMS, maybe

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

It is incredible that you can speak of enjoying free software and curse RMS in the same breath.

This statement is heresy ONLY if you believe Free Software and RMS are synonymous. I believe they are not. Free Software existed well before RMS, and will exist well after he is gone. He only "created" Free Software if you accept his conceit that Free Software is only software that follows his definitions of Free. I do not. He has contributed a lot to this world, but didn't invent the world. Many people don't realize that The Cathedral and the Bazaar wasn't necessarily contrasting the development styles of commercial software vs. free software, but different styles of development within Free Software itself, and the RMS driven gcc was the example of the "closed" Cathedral. Because of the lack of innovation in gcc, especially around the time ANSI C++ came out and it needed large changes, folks forked gcc into egcs, a more "bazaar" style development model, that eventually became the offical gcc. Or are you saying Eric Raymond has nothing to say on the topic of Free Software because he differs with RMS?

Or if this was a troll, nevermind.

Re:Useless to RMS, maybe

[Gumshoe]

Do you not agree that the situation we are presented with today (completely free Java platform) is better than the situation we were saddled with yesterday (almost free Java platform)? Do you think this situation would have come about if RMS et al, weren't so "zealotous"?

Re:Useless to RMS, maybe

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If you disagree with RMS ... why don't you stop using the software he wrote with his convictions ?

-> no linux (gcc required, you MIGHT try icc)
-> no gnome (maybe parts of kde, IF you get it compiled without gcc)
-> ...

(even parts of windows 2k/xp were written by open-source "zealots" so I suggest you stay away from it too ...)

Keep in mind that those ideals also started the cooperative development that free source code sharing enables, so indirectly he's responsible for much more software.

Re:Useless to RMS, maybe

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Sounds like you want to fork "Free Software" to mean no-cost opensource, and you appear to raise the question of whether merely using some Free Software occasionally should make you a part of the community. Interesting question. Apparently you feel the Free Software community doesn't support Free Software principles. Doesn't sound like your version of community has much in the way of integrity.

Re:Useless to RMS, maybe

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Obviously Eric Raymond has nothing to say on the topic of Free Software. Checkout his homepage. He talks of open-source, not Free. Go to his sitemap, search for the word "Free", or even "free". No hits. Follow the link to the open source initiative. Search for "free" or "Free". Again, no hits. Methinks your perhaps confusing two different philosophies. "Open" and "Free" aren't even the samething. :-)

Re:Why should I use Eclipse instead of Emacs + JDE

[bwalling]

Not to mention that Eclipse let's you do really neat things, like stop the debugger right before an exception was thrown, fix the bug, and continue with the debugging as if nothing had happened!


Heck, even Visual Basic has this. I got used to it, and I've been disappointed that I couldn't get it elsewhere. It's quite nice.

Give me a break

[leereyno]

"There was only one catch, it was build on top of the proprietary java platform. This made it useless for the Free Software community."

There is plenty of java code that has been released under the GPL and BSD licenses. The only way that java would be useless to someone is if they turned their nose up at it. Turning one's nose up at something for non-technical reasons is usually a bad idea.

Lee

Re:Give me a break

[leereyno]

http://www.go-mono.com/

Be my guest....

Re:SWT binaries?

[AG]

"Could one, for instance, now compile a Java program using the SWT library to a native binary using GCJ, so it could be run without using a JVM?"

Yes, absolutely. Get ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/rhug/swt-gcj-green-sn apshot.tar.gz

Run configure/make/make install, and you'll en up with lib-org-eclipse-swt.so.

People are also building for Win32 using gcj for Windows (or a cross compiler from Linux)

AG

The point

[AveryRegier]

I've been following both of these projects for years.

The point that so many have missed is that this shows how close the GNU implementations are to be being a complete JDK replacement. Eclipse is a very complex beast that uses nearly all of the Java APIs. This achievement shows the quality of the years of work that has gone into these free projects. All of this work is now finally ready to pay off.

Congratulations to the whole ClassPath and GCJ teams!

-Avery Regier

Re:Java on the client-side needs this to compete..

[DigitalDragon]

I predict that the SWT libraries will not only get quite expansive... but include things other than GUI widgets/toolkits

SWT library already does include GUI widgets/toolkit.

You are right though, saying that it is immature. We've been doing some serious development on SWT trying to convert full featured application from AWT to SWT. So far it's been going great.

However, here's a warning for all of you Java developers: there's quite a few things you still can't do. All Table work is a terrible hassle, there's no easy way of changing colors in single table cells and table functionality is very, very limited. We were able to improve some of that, but that actually ment implementing our own widgets for table. Anyways, it is pretty bad. Hopefully in 2.2 version (next year) they will solve some of the problems.

If anyone from Eclipse development community is reading, please, focus more not on the new features (cheat lists, wizards and stuff), but try to actually make SWT a reacher platform, there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

At the end, I wanted to summarize my opinion of SWT, which is not really what this topic is about. But here it goes: it is a great platform and a great concept (using native libraries and not drawing everything like Swing does). And you are correct - this will/could be Java's savior on the client. But anyone who would want to write a serious application in SWT should think twice before that, wheigh down all pros/cons and also try writing a prototype to make sure that it you can implement anything that you want.

One of the biggest innovations of SWT is a library called JFace, which hides a lot of basic/low level GUI functionality under an interface that is sort of a Model-View-Controller framework. This idea is brilliant, and this framework is just a pleasure to work with. ;)

Anyways, enough with the rambling.. Happy Christmass, everybody!

Re:SWT binaries?

[MillionthMonkey]

Could one, for instance, now compile a Java program using the SWT library to a native binary using GCJ, so it could be run without using a JVM?

Yes.

SWT takes a middle ground between the extremes of AWT and Swing, and abandons a sacred cow of Sun's- the idea that the same binary must run on all platforms without any modifications. This attitude has really been an albatross around Java's neck and is the reason everyone thinks that Java applications have to be cheesy- because Sun demands that they must be equally cheesy everywhere!

AWT takes the approach that ALL widgets are drawn by the native layer. This isn't a bad idea, except that if no native widget is available (like a slider, or tree), AWT refuses to improvise one at the Java level. This is why there are no sliders or trees in AWT, even on platforms like Windows where native widgets for both are present, because there's some platform out there somewhere that doesn't have them. Maybe AIX or something, who knows. AWT is strictly lowest-common-denominator and that's why everyone hates it.

People bitched and moaned. So Sun went straight to the opposite extreme with Swing, which refuses to even consider the native widgets. Instead, it uses Java level methods to draw pictures of them to fool you. This means that Swing can offer you a "pluggable look and feel", so you can have Motif buttons on Windows, or "Metal" buttons on the Mac! Except nobody cares. Microsoft promptly kicked Swing in the nuts by introducing skins with XP, so it becomes obvious what is really Windows and what is pretending to look like Windows but can't keep up. And Swing suffers greatly from the second system effect- it's overengineered as hell. A Hello World in Swing gobbles up 20 MB of overhead- mostly classes loading and initializing themselves. In fact, Swing is why AWT is still alive. AWT sucks, but you can run a program that lasts for more than a couple minutes with it. Writing stable applications with Swing is a real art. (It is in AWT too, but only because Sun has pretty much left AWT flapping in the wind with minimal improvements, maintenance, or bug fixes. Since Swing came along, AWT has been treated like a red-headed stepchild by Sun.)

SWT is much more like AWT than Swing, except that it takes a practical middle ground- something Sun doesn't seem capable of doing at all! It offers you a nice set of native widgets. If a slider or a tree isn't available on some platform, they draw a picture of one for you. This might make sliders and trees look funny on platforms that lack sliders and trees, but you would expect things to look funny on those platforms. People using Windows (i.e. most of them) aren't bothered by any of this.

This sacrifices binary compatibility. Each platform has its own version of the SWT library. For example, there is a Windows specific swt.jar and a swt.dll that goes with it, and there is a Solaris version of swt.jar and a native swt.so library that it uses. Even though the libraries are implemented completely differently, the public interfaces are the same. So if you develop a program against the Windows version of the SWT library, you won't have any problem compiling against the Linux version. (Although I've heard that SWT blows on Linux, but that was a while ago and I don't know what the current state is.)

SWT doesn't abstract much away from you, unlike AWT, where you are separated from the low level GUI details by a leaky abstraction. In SWT you have to write the frigging event loop yourself! (Which is not a big deal- it's a while loop, usually two lines.) There are a few other gotchas, and you absolutely have to test a SWT program on all platforms you're releasing for, but in practical terms the same was always true for AWT because of the leakiness of its abstraction. SWT at least doesn't pretend that you don't have to worry about this stuff.

This means you have to compile and test a program three times before releasing it, once for Windows, once for Linux, once for Mac. This violates Sun's sacred cow of binary compatibility. But when you're releasing a Java application, you're going to make separate installers for each platform anyway, because you have to bundle a JVM for everybody. So it's not really a big deal, unless you're writing an applet- and applets went the way of the dodo long ago in no small part because of AWT and Swing!

With SWT, you can make really nice, professional looking programs. The layer between you and the OS is very thin (JNI). If your program looks silly or stupid, it's YOUR fault. When the user changes the skin in XP, your SWT programs will pick up the change right away. In fact, it isn't even obvious that you're not using C! You can write your stuff in Java and actually get away with it! So that's why I think SWT is the future (if there is any future left anymore) of Java on the client, and why I will be junking AWT/Swing completely when starting new projects.

For more info see the SWT FAQ. There is some GCJ and SWT info available here.

Now take Eclipse, please!

[Latent Heat]

1) SWT seems like a cool idea, but with its close coupling to Windows (Windows is the farthest along -- the other bindings seem to be "under construction"), how is this different than (gasp, choke, gag) J++? 2) Can someone point me at how to get started in Eclipse? The menu and dialogs seem completely non-standard -- where do I begin with this thing?

Re:Now take Eclipse, please!

[MillionthMonkey]

SWT seems like a cool idea, but with its close coupling to Windows (Windows is the farthest along -- the other bindings seem to be "under construction"), how is this different than (gasp, choke, gag) J++?

Oh come on! At least SWT bindings for Linux and Solaris exist, they can exist in the first place, and you can assist in their development. How long do you think you would have to wait for Microsoft to release Linux and Solaris versions of the Windows Foundation Classes?

Um, Java++ == J++

[Latent Heat]

I guess not many people have looked at J++, but if you have a chance, you will come away with a strong, strong sense of deja vu with regard to Visual Studio .NET.

I disagree in many respects

[Stu Charlton]

I've written quite a few Swing & server-side applications myself.

"Microsoft and MFC rules on the client side (on Win32)".

MFC is dead, long live .NET. And Visual Basic rules on the client Win32 side, and has for quite some time.

"But now, Java needs to become a viable alternative to C++ based programming on the client-side."

Absolutely not. Java's only main competitor for Win32 client-side supremacy is VB.NET and C#.NET. C++/MFC is a dead-end.

On UNIX, I would suggest it's a toss-up between C++/Qt and C/GTK, and IMHO I think Java's more productive than either (though pre-1.4 X-windows Swing performance was unacceptable).

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be a battle that Java will win on Win32, even with SWT, for a couple of reasons. Microsoft has the industry's talent in developing high-performance Win32 GUI framewords, which will come out for .NET first. WinForms.NET is effectively the next iteration of what was out in Visual J++ 6.0's WFC libraries.

They also have the tools support with Visual Studio. The Java world currently has only *ONE* usable GUI building tool -- JBuilder. And that's not saying much. Eclipse won't have one for some time. The second major problem with Swing (besides performance) was this lack of tools support. I don't forsee a groundswell of tools support for SWT from multiple vendors.

Thirdly, there isn't a whole lot of impetus behind client-side "thick" GUIs in the industry. I don't foresee IBM throwing lots of money at making SWT general-use... the open source community will probably assist in this area, but I'm somewhat skeptical about how much adoption this will generate.

On the bright side, I'm not sure it really "matters". Windows peeps will write stuff with VB like they've always done, the C++'ers will switch to C# (they've really not much choice -- I worked at an MS shop as the Java junkie for 2 years, most C++/Windows programmers there took what MS has given them... there's a lot of shock and dismay when Borland/OWL is on one's resume). The 2nd most widely used GUI framework family will be (gasp) Carbon/Cocoa on Mac OS X. ANd rounding out the list, *nix peeps will continue head-butting between Qt and GTK+ (both of which are still gawdawfully ugly IMHO, quite apparent actually if you run a GTK+ app side-by-side with a Mac OS X application. But I digress).

"I can see them actually introducing more Java extension libraries for other things that Sun did a terrible job on. Collections. Better native threading model. Better I/O model. The list goes on and on."

Whoa, whoa! I disagree with each one of these. We are talking about J2SE 1.4, are we not? I'm quite happy with the collections framework (and I compare this to both stdc++ and the Smalltalk collections library), the java.nio.* package is very sophisticated, and IMHO the threading model is a matter of taste, not stemming from any particular technical disadvantage.

Re:I disagree in many respects

[mgkimsal2]

On UNIX, I would suggest it's a toss-up between C++/Qt and C/GTK, and IMHO I think Java's more productive than either (though pre-1.4 X-windows Swing performance was unacceptable).

1.4 isn't acceptable either. Better than pre 1.4? Yes. Functional? Yes. Acceptable? Haven't seen anything yet which leads me to believe it's 'acceptable'.

Re:I disagree in many respects

[Stu Charlton]

Again, if you think Java's collections libraries are such a dream, you haven't read the code or even understand what is going on.

Ah, so instead of enumerating rational reasons as to why J2SE Collections are somehow "terrible", you are attacking my expertise which you have no knowledge of. And I never claimed they were "a dream", I suggested I was quite happy with them in general.

"You should check out a few good libraries such as JGL."

I have used JGL since 1996, and it is excellent, quite a lot more features than J2SE collections.

To even compare Java to a Smalltalk collections libraries or stdc++ is pretty shortsighted.

Our disconnect here appears to be in what I'm comparing. You're comparing feature-for-feature. I'm comparing the simplicity and practicality of them. The J2SE collections are very simple, very powerful, and a good "base" collections library. stdc++, JGL, ST libraries are all very "complete" libraries suitable for a myriad of situations, but do not lend themselves well to learning or understanding quickly.

I am certainly not attempting to claim that J2SE collections are a step forward in the evolution of collections -- the point is that they were never intended to be. Why call something terrible if it never aspired to be anything other than simple, relatively powerful (vs. JDK 1.1), and easy to learn?

(regarding J2SE 1.4 I/O) .... it is still far from what it needs to be... Although, it is far better than what used to exist... it is far from seamless and far from transparent.

What does it need to be? Transparent from what? Transparency is not a universal principle. And what seam do you speak of, the unavoidable one between old I/O and new I/O (which is a relatively decent integration at the moment), or another?

Java has no real idea of thread priority.

An unfortunate tradeoff when working in a cross-platform environment. The priority heuristics in the JVM are largely dependent on platform.

Notify/yield/wait is extremely unpredictable with no real guarantee as to what can happen when a thread is notified.

Yield, like priority, is a heuristic hint, for the reasons above. As for notify/wait, they're well specified as to what happens when a thread is notified -- the main problem is the lack of guaranteed fairness. So, it's theoretically impossible to prove fairness in the thread model, again a tradeoff due to platform portability. In practice, most JVM's exhibit probalistic fairness and have relatively sophisticated schedulers.

Note that none of this prevents any JVM from providing their own non-portable APIs for strict priority scheduling or FIFO lock queues. And some of the embedded VMs do provide this, IIRC.

Stopping threads is extremely cumbersome.

Stopping threads arbitrarily is dangerous and I'd really like to understand why there should be an alternative way to do this other than an application-specific mechanism.

Inter-thread communication is difficult.

This is a matter of taste. Communication via shared object state or through other means... which is easier? Depends on the programmer, depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Guarded Wait/Notify is a pretty understandable approach.

I'm not going to go into more details except to say that you may feel that J2SE 1.4 is a gift to the masses, but in reality, there are core issues that still remained unsolved.

It is easy to criticize and call something "terrible" when you don't take into account the goals and priorities of the effort.

I never said J2SE was a gift to the masses and solved all problems. I just disagreed about some of your criticisms, as they seemed to be based on "anything that doesn't meet exactly my need right now sucks" and was completely devoid of the context of the tradeoffs in the features as Sun has implemented them.

Most certainly Sun has made many mistakes: ThreadGroups are ridiculously useless, as are the Java 1.0/1.1 collections, the Java 1.0 event model, taking over 5 years to evolve Swing, not fostering a plethora of look and feels, not giving any real documentation on writing performant Swing programs.

"I do feel that with what IBM is doing, others will follow IBM's lead and develop other extension libraries that are better than the Java core itself. IBM has proved it can be done, and can be done without modifying the core."

In a way, I hope you're right... but I don't think it's the direction the industry is taking.

Damn

[spudwiser]

I thought they were giving me a car :(

How Eclipse/SWT saved the GCJ project

[Anonymous Coward]

The GNU folks had no hope of recreating a cleanroom AWT and Swing - it was just too bloody big and complicated. It would have taken at least 4 years to create a cleanroom Swing. Then along comes Eclipse/SWT which did all the hard bits for them in C. The result - a portable and very fast Java GUI. Now folks have a very good reason to work on GCJ because they can finally see some concrete results. Success breeds further success.
Compiling your application to a single binary (or .exe if you will) is a HUGE advantage for distributing applications. That 20 meg JRE is a complete pain in the butt for a client to download. It's much better to simply run a 5 megabyte GCJ-compiled application.
Java doesn't suck. Java's GUIs need not be slow. It was Swing that sucked. Finally people realize where to lay blame.
Sun - get rid of Swing once and for all! Swing is a poorly designed GUI tookit and a complete embarassment to Java.

Blackdown (or was it Blackstone)?

[msobkow]

So another GNU team has almost managed to replicate the work done by the Blackdown team 4-5 years ago.

Meanwhile the GNU team has almost managed to release a kernel.

On the sidelines, Wine has almost enabled cross-platform execution, provided you don't want to do something so uncommon as opening a file picker!!! (I mean, come on! I can play video games, but I can't pick an input file to open with a utility program?)

Lately I see a lot of "almost" me-too projects, but I'd be a lot more impressed if they didn't start celebrating until the damned things worked.

Eclipse is free and pretty nice (need to try it again -- it was rough when I first looked almost a year ago.) Sun's SunONE Studio 4 is ok, too.

My favourite remains JBuilder, but I just can't afford to upgrade anymore (paid full price for 3.0, paid for the 3.5 upgrade, the 4.0 upgrade, and realized I'd spent over $2000 with no end in site.)

Despite all the fancy IDEs out there, I still do the bulk of my editing with vi(m), emacs, and text tools, then debug and fix in an IDE. I've yet to find a Java (or C++) IDE whose editor is more than barely usable. But that is another rant...

Re:Blackdown (or was it Blackstone)?

[sab39]

Gee whiz, when GIVEN all the source to Java by Sun, one team was able to port it to linux fairly quickly (when it already ran on Solaris!).

The GCJ team has done something FAR more impressive: without *any* of Sun's sources, they've built a Java implementation from the ground up.

But I shouldn't even bother: you've clearly made up your mind and no amount of facts are likely to change it...

Re:Java on the client-side needs this to compete..

[MisterFancypants]

Otherwise... companies like IBM are going to do it anyways. Just using extension libraries. If Microsoft was smart, they'd have done five years ago what IBM is doing now. Microsoft would own Java on the client-side if they would have played it right.

Uh that's EXACTLY what Microsoft did! Extentions for COM, the WTL, delegation event model, etc. And what'd they get for their trouble? A lawsuit from Sun!

I come to bury VB not to praise it

[Stu Charlton]

No, I think VB should be cast out into the depths of hell from whenst it was created.

But it still is the most popular client-side language in the world.

Regardless of the politcial debates surrounding .NET, it is much, much, better than Microsoft's prior technology platform (DNA, "we put the COM in COMplex"). They've created a high quality framework and platform. I wouldn't say it's vastly superior to Java, but it's certainly competitve in some areas (not in others).

SWT vs AWT/Swing

[Latent Heat]

Your mention of the Linux and Solaris SWT bindings as separate bindings raises interesting questions about Java and the degree of Java Political Correctness.

AWT/Swing doesn't have or need bindings because 1) they are 100% Java or 2) to the extent that they are not 100% Java and need to JNI down to something, that something is distributed with the Java VM that appears on each machine, so you don't need to distribute any platform specific AWT/Swing bindings with your app.

SWT needs separate bindings for each target platform -- it becomes like wxWindows or Qt in that regard. If you want to distribute an SWT app, you need to distribute those bindings, or tell your users how to install the right binding on their machine. But then you are into a bindings model rather than a true "write once, run everywhere" model.

My remark about J++ may not be completely off the mark. To the extent that C# is in reality J++, and that WFC was transformed to System.Windows.Forms, and to the extent the Mono is going down the bindings road to port System.Windows.Forms (to answer your question, 2002 - 1997 = 5 years to get Linux and Solaris versions of WFC), and to the extent that Miguel gets lambasted for doing what he is doing, why should Eclipse/SWT get a free pass for doing a similar thing with Java?

Re:SWT vs AWT/Swing

[MillionthMonkey]

Your mention of the Linux and Solaris SWT bindings as separate bindings raises interesting questions about Java and the degree of Java Political Correctness.

Yes, see my rant in this thread about Sun and its Political Correctness regarding Java. Whenever Sun is faced with a choice between practicality and ideology, they seem to choose ideology every time.

AWT/Swing doesn't have or need bindings because 1) they are 100% Java or 2) to the extent that they are not 100% Java and need to JNI down to something, that something is distributed with the Java VM that appears on each machine, so you don't need to distribute any platform specific AWT/Swing bindings with your app.

That's a fairly good description- the native bindings for AWT (and Swing, which depends on AWT) are hidden within the JVM. Actually AWT uses a peer layer which is not present in SWT. Buttons in AWT are represented by a java.awt.Button. The java.awt.Button class never changes- it's the exact same class across Linux, Windows, Solaris, etc. The class accesses platform specific button resources via an instance field it has that implements the java.awt.peer.ButtonPeer interface. On Windows the implementing class is a sun.awt.windows.WButtonPeer. This way each class has a globally unique definition. In SWT, they didn't bother with the peer layer at all. The thing that changes as you move from one platform to another is the very org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Button that is manipulated by your client code- there is a separate version of that class for each platform (they're careful to always keep the public methods the same). Sun would never do something like that. They meticulously avoid having classes change from one platform to another and in fact they seem enamored of the idea that a class name should get you a unique class out of some global repository. (Of course, there's usually a million versions of a class anyway, but whatever.) IBM could have incorporated a peer layer into SWT rather easily, but I guess they decided it wasn't worth the bother.

SWT needs separate bindings for each target platform -- it becomes like wxWindows or Qt in that regard. If you want to distribute an SWT app, you need to distribute those bindings, or tell your users how to install the right binding on their machine. But then you are into a bindings model rather than a true "write once, run everywhere" model.

Well this is also the case with AWT and Swing, which have their platform-specific bindings hidden right within the JVMs- so you don't even realize it's a problem! There isn't a Java GUI library on earth that won't at some point require a JNI layer somewhere. But the native layer of SWT is extremely thin- IBM claims there's "nothing interesting in the native code" and that it's a 1-1 function mapping. If they could convince Sun to incorporate SWT bindings into the JVMs along with the AWT stuff, then it would be on pretty much equal footing with Sun's GUI toolkits. Fat chance though, as Sun has already put all its eggs in Swing's basket. They're known for hissing at SWT whenever the topic arises.

My remark about J++ may not be completely off the mark. To the extent that C# is in reality J++, and that WFC was transformed to System.Windows.Forms, and to the extent the Mono is going down the bindings road to port System.Windows.Forms (to answer your question, 2002 - 1997 = 5 years to get Linux and Solaris versions of WFC), and to the extent that Miguel gets lambasted for doing what he is doing, why should Eclipse/SWT get a free pass for doing a similar thing with Java?

It's not really a valid comparison, for several reasons. First of all there's intent. It's not as if IBM created SWT with the goal of destroying Swing. They just needed a GUI library with which to write Eclipse after they determined (correctly) that Swing sucked too much to be seriously considered for developing Eclipse. SWT was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Now they're saying, "we wrote this nice GUI library for our app, and if you want to use it for your own purposes, here it is." Compare that to Microsoft's predatory behavior with J++, which was carefully designed to discourage portable code by seducing you with visual designers that only worked with WFC. Often J++ users didn't even realize they were writing Windows-specific programs because Microsoft was doing such a good job of obfuscating that simple fact!

As for platform specificity- Swing runs on all platforms, and so does SWT- except that the Windows implementation is nicer and further along than the others. So what? Are you suggesting that IBM doesn't want Eclipse to be successful on Linux? The Windows implementation has probably received more of IBM's resources so far because of what their user base is- there's nothing Windows specific in the design of SWT per se. Anyone is free to help on improving the other bindings, which by the way are still part of SWT, in a way that Mono is not part of Microsoft's .NET implementation! If Microsoft were implementing Mono themselves, I'd be more impressed with your "5 years" statistic. But face it, Mono owes its existence to Java, because it conveniently (if perhaps unconvincingly) undermines the argument that .NET is not cross platform like its competition. (You might say .NET owes its existence to Java as well, but that's another thread.) But Mono faces an uncertain future. It is resting on a bed of Microsoft patents. And the non-Windows version of .NET will never be as nice, not ever. Microsoft has made that much pretty clear. How much longer than Java do you think Mono will survive? Mono is cool, and I salute the Mono team for the effort they're putting into it. I wish them all the luck in the world. And I might play around with it. But no way would I let my career hang on its continued existence or relevance, because I don't trust Microsoft.

Re:SWT binaries?

[slamb]

SWT [...] abandons [...] the idea that the same binary must run on all platforms. [...] Even though the libraries are implemented completely differently, the public interfaces are the same.

Hmm, I can't get the first statement from the second. In Java, you shouldn't ever need to recompile code unless the interface it uses is changed. So a jar you make that uses swt.jar shouldn't need to be recompiled unless it uses JNI itself. No different than AWT.

SWT and AWT both use JNI, so both (the libraries themselves, not consumers thereof) need to be compiled for the appropriate platform. The only difference is that Sun makes AWT, so you can assume that it came with the JVM and avoid distributing your own copy. Probably not a reasonable assumption for SWT.

Re:SWT binaries?

[MillionthMonkey]

Hmm, I can't get the first statement from the second. In Java, you shouldn't ever need to recompile code unless the interface it uses is changed. So a jar you make that uses swt.jar shouldn't need to be recompiled unless it uses JNI itself. No different than AWT.

Yeah, I misspoke, sort of. Strictly speaking, you don't really need to recompile, or you shouldn't, since IBM is careful to keep the public methods of each SWT implementation the same on each platform.

If you want to sleep well at night, however, I recommend doing the recompile anyway to make sure they didn't miss anything! Practically speaking, for other reasons you may be running a separate build script for each version of your program anyway, so it's probably just easier to do it in each build script instead of separating it out into a separate step.

Ah, Java

[Raul654]

Code once, debug everywhere. Although, to be fair, is that still the situation or has it improved since I last dabbled?

Re:Ah, Java

[Tim C]

That really depends on when you last "dabbled" and what you were doing, doesn't it?

I've been developing Java code professionally for a little over two years now, writing server-side stuff for web sites. About half of us work under Linux, the rest using either Win2k or XP, deploying the code on machines running RedHat, and we've never had any trouble.

Of course, if you're talking about applets, then your problem isn't with Java, but with the browser producers' broken JVMs (especially the MS one, which simply isn't worth bothering with). Applets are only really of any use if you control the client environment, right down to being able to tell people to download a new JVM. No use for silly little toys on websites, but fine for more complex, bespoke stuff (although still a pain in the arse to develop, of course, especially if you're not used to creating GUIs).

Re:SWT binaries?

[MillionthMonkey]

Hmm, I can't get the first statement from the second. In Java, you shouldn't ever need to recompile code unless the interface it uses is changed. So a jar you make that uses swt.jar shouldn't need to be recompiled unless it uses JNI itself. No different than AWT.

Actually (after thinking about it a little more) it's really a matter of whether you consider the SWT libs to be part of the JVM, or part of the distributed binary for your program.

If it's part of the JVM, then your code that's compiled against it is a 100% portable. But unless Sun incorporates the SWT libs into the JVM (as has been suggested to them by many people) then you have to distribute it yourself, which means each platform gets a different binary distribution, differing only in the SWT implementation. Hence my misleading comment about portable binaries.

Most Java apps I've seen bundle their own JRE instead of trusting whatever's on the target machine anyway, so different binaries are going out the door anyway and the point is largely moot.

Re:Useless how?

[Tim C]

Saying Eclipse is useless for free development is like saying Linux is useless on the Intel platform because the Intel microcode isn't free.

Shush, you'll start giving them ideas... ;-)

Seriously though, you seem to be forgetting that you're talking about people who believe that all code should be free. It doesn't matter to these people that the free and proprietary JVMs will be indistinguishable (at least to Eclipse), they know that there's a difference.

Personally, I don't care; I've been developing in Java for a little over two years now, and have never had a problem that could've been solved by it being Free. You get the source to the core APIs with the SDK, and I don't do anything that would require the source to the JVM. If they care enough to spend their time developing something like this, though, good on them. I won't be using it myself, but I certainly have to give them credit for actually living by their principles.

As for the hardware, if it weren't so expensive and difficult to make, you can bet there'd be a Free x86 compatible processor available. As long as manufacturing costs are as high as they are, though, we're not going to see one. Again, I don't care - my P4 works just fine. Then again, I'm a little more pragmatic; I'm a professional coder, working on closed-source code (unless the client pays for the source too), so I can't afford not to be.

I have a dream

[theolein]

I really hope that the gcj effort manages to implement all the classes of the standard Java API and above all that the compilation to binary becomes a reality for all Java developers. The implied importance of it being GPL is not that important to most of us who actually do use Java, the limitations, lack of AWT, Swing or a full SWT, memory consumption and speed are much more important. I wish I had the time so that I could work on this myself, because this would provide Java Developers the possibility of finally writing GUI code on Windows, Linux and Mac that could compete on a level ground with C# and .NET.

I can already see problems arising with Mono in that I simply don't trust MS not to try and kick it in the balls with a patent suit after it has started to become widely used. .NET and C# might be easy to use and very powerful, thereby providing the "carrot"for many developers, but I think it is naive and irresponsible to think that MS will play fair. Have they ever done so before?

Java is easy to use and secure, and at the moment, on cellphones which have Java bytecode instruction sets in their CPU's, is anexcellent opportunity for expansion. Cellphones are a booming market and present a real chance for Java on the client side with J2ME. Being able to compile to native code would make it even better suited for that purpose. MS knows how important the Cellphone market is which is why they are up to their tricks and abuse there again (Sendo) and which is why almost all Cellphone makers are giving MS a wide berth and are using Symbian, which brings the story back to Java...

.NET in a nutshell

[Stu Charlton]

.NET is one of many things, depending who you talk to in Microsoft's marketing dept. First I'll define that. Forgive me if it's review.

Here's the things that it isn't (in reality):
- A new server platform (MIcrosoft marketed it as such, even though there really isn't anything new in their Windows 2000 lines of servers yet).
- A some new magic technology (i.e. the marketing idea that MS Passport became Passport.NET and thus was embued with a +6 long-sword)

Here's what it is:
- The common type system, language spec, and language interface. (CTS, CLS, and CLI). It's a way of getting several languages to interoperate through a virtual machine.

- The Common Language Runtime (CLR) for Win32. This is the Virtual Machine. It's as fast as Java 1.4 in some ways, slower in some ways, and over 2x faster at certain operations like object creation. Ya gatta hand it to Microsoft's x86 team, they know their stuff.

- The following languages are released by Microsoft for .NET: C#, VB.NET, C++.NET, and JScript.NET. C# is first among equals, but VB.NET can do anything C# can do, again because the CTS/CLS is "the language". .NET just gives you a syntactical skin on top of this abstract language.

- The Base Class Libraries (BCL), ASP.NET, COM+ (aka Managed Components), and ADO.NET are included.

- The ECMA standards body has been submitted the CLI, CTS, CLS, BCL, and C#. Mainly for show, but maybe something good may come from Miguel et al.

What's .NET good at?

- It's a much better way for binary module interoperability than COM was. Viewed this way, .NET could be seen as the next step in evolving binary interop. I.e. in DOS, it was TSR's and interrupts, in Win 3.1/*nix it was DLL's and pointer-tables, in Win95+/Gnome/KDE it was COM or CORBA components, and in .NET, interop is at the CLASS level. They've basically learned the Java/JAR model of interoperability, then abstracted it to multi-languages (they just call JAR files "assemblies")

The language-interop issue at first glance seems like a red herring feature, but in fact it's rather important from a programmer's sociological perspective. VB and C++ programmers are naturally opposed to each other in philosophy - their means and ends do not peacefully coexist. .NET makes all languages equal. This was painfully NOT TRUE in COM programming! Almost all of the plumbing underneath COM was to support Visual Basic's interoperability with C/C++ components. .NET levels the playing field here, and people can't pick on VB anymore (other than its cheesy syntax). Anyone can throw an exception in C# and catch it in VB, or define a class in C++ and inherit from it in C#. And debug across all these languages in a single session, if need be. Quite liberating for system architects dealing with a large, multi-team project with reusable components and potentially different skill-sets (hence different languages).

Things you can do with .NET DLL's that are better than traditional Win32 COM DLL's:
- The Windows Registry is NO LONGER NEEDED. Nothing in .NET uses it, sing the praises!
- Easy and Flexible Side by side versioning. An app that links against a version stays with that version unless updated or a sysadmin coerces it to use a newer DLL version.
- No filename conflicts (i.e. no 2 vendors with MYSILLYLIBRARY.DLL overwriting each other -- each DLL has a public key stamp)

Other things... Making web services in .NET is CHILD'S PLAY compared to some other platforms. Especially with Visual Studio. They've really made distributed interoperability easy -- though of course none of this will scale or be bulletproof without real engineering work, but that's never been Microsoft's game -- let J2EE vendors do the dirty guinea pig work, they'll copy it into Windows/IIS eventually.

So -- you see, .NET really is about making Windows developer's lives A LOT EASIER. Which really was all that Visual J++ 6.0 was about before they decided to "break" features for political reasons.
The jury's still out as to whether .NET is appropriate as a new standard for dynamic languages like Smalltalk, Lisp, Haskell, ML, etc.

I say it's more about "syntax skin" than "flexibility". Certainly you can write Lisp onto .NET but you have to contort it into classes & methods if you want to interoperate with any other .NET language... this is what the C++ people have to do too! (i.e. no more templates, multiple inheritance, at least until .NET 2.0 :) .NET isn't the second coming, though many Missy-followers think it is because their intranet is locked to http://msdn.microsoft.com and really don't have a lot of exposure to the alternatives out there (i.e. J2EE or perhaps PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.)

Starting with Eclipse; Help a newbie!

[deragon]

Would you guys have pointers to start with eclipse? I downloaded and tried the IDE, but I would like to learn more on how to use SWT, but I could not find any doc on SWT (API, tutorial) on www.eclipse.org. Its probably there, but could not find it. I find that there should be more "Quick start/pointer" document on that site.

Maybe you have books to recommend. Please provide any helpfull info you got (libraries to suggest, tricks, etc...) that would help a newbie to jump start quickly on this platform.

Aww man!

[CoffeeJedi]

It's a software tool!?!? Dang... And here I thought I would be getting a free Japanese sports-coupe!

Proprietary platform

[toriver]

I guess their next goal would be to have GCC not target that proprietary platform, Windows...

Re:Java + GPLed qt = Attack on .NET

[Glock27]

I wish there would be Qt bindings to java as a swing replacement for various plattforms.

Get busy with SWT then. SWT is designed to do exactly that (bind native widgets to Java), and is open source.

Have fun!

Re:SWT binaries?

[Glock27]

Which JVM is being used on QNX? gcc?

Thanks!

Re:Finalizers

[MillionthMonkey]

Most of the time, when you free native resources owned by a Java object, you do so in the "finalizer" that the GC calls when it's about to free your object. A finalizer is analogous to a C++ destructor and is called ClassName.finalize().

Never rely on finalizers for reclaiming resources or your program's behavior is undefined. You can't control when the garbage collector will run the finalizer, and if there's plenty of memory it may never run. Scroll down to the middle of this page for more details on why you shouldn't release any sort of limited system resource in finalizers. (Except for memory.)

Re:SWT binaries?

[MillionthMonkey]

I've been writing Swing applications for a while, and I love using this toolkit. My programs are all stable, and the run unchanged on any OS supporting JDK 1.2+. They are fast and look good. What is it about using Swing that you think is unstable?

• Too many classes loading all at once
• Resource consumption
• Way too much stalling and unresponsiveness during garbage collects
• Text editing portions of Swing are overengineered- documents create way too many objects
• Weird threading issues (you have to be careful to make all GUI changes in the event thread)
• Complaints from users

I would say that writing complex and high-performance apps with Swing takes some experience, but is not required for many apps. Like all Swing defenders, I'll point to JBuilder as a beautiful Swing-based application that works well. Yes it requires a fairly recent machine.

I use IntelliJ IDEA at work and I love it even though it's Swing based. However everything about the thing is a memory hog (this isn't all Swing's fault). Having used Swing, I'm impressed at how well they did with it. But it's really hard on your computer. And Java developers are more willing than most people to put up with Swing because they're sympathetic to the technology- in sort of the same way that Mozilla users are willing to forgive XUL for looking so weird.

You didn't mention that you also have to manage memory and native resources in your program, which is one of those major gotchas that can cause memory leaks and crashes. Now instead of relying on the garbage collector you have to step way back to the dark ages and tediously manage UI memory. Ugh!

Yep, SWT is a lower level library, there's no doubt about that. To a lesser extent, you have to worry about resources in AWT and Swing too. People forget to call Graphics.dispose() all the time. And it's not like you're completely back in C++. You just have to unload your SWT resources, not every single object you create in the entire program. That's a big difference.