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Mono+Ikvm Runs Eclipse

Posted by timothy on from the lovely-free-software dept.

miguel writes "Today Zoltan Varga announced that he got Eclipse running on Mono using the open source IKVM Java virtual machine for .NET by Jeroen Frijters. This is the first time a complete free software JVM implementation can run eclipse in a reasonable time. This runs with our latest Mono release. Mandatory screenshot"

3 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Just out of curiosity... by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2, Informative

    Eclipse is written in java.
    Someone wrote a jvm for .net (mono)
    So now eclipse can run on .net

    This offers the advantages of being able to be compilied to the native platform ( I think - i don't follow .net too much) and technically you could from eclipse call functions written in other languages on .net.

  2. Meaning by fm6 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Does anyone know what the hell this actually *MEANS*?
    That's actually quite an important question. Let me give it a stab.

    As I've previously argued, .NET has some nice technical advantages over J2EE, but probably has no hope of overcoming Java's lead. (And even if it did MS would just screw it up.) But the Java/.NET thing doesn't have to be an either/or choice. It only works that way because Microsoft has very deliberately excluded Java backward compatibility from .NET. (There's J# or whatever it's called now, but that's just a migration path.)

    Now, various open source people have gone off doing what they do best, and their efforts are beginning to converge:

    • Mono, the open-source version of .NET, seems to be moving forward apace.
    • The IKVM people seem to have negated Microsoft's non-support for Java.
    • Mono's biggest missing piece is an IDE. Eclipse is a first-rate IDE, and now runs under Mono.
    • Aside from giving Mono an IDE, Varga has given an impressive demonstration of the robustness of IKVM and Mono.
    So the whole Java versus .NET debate has changed radically, and now may be less of debate than a negotiation towards coexistence.

    Of course, Microsoft will almost certainly make silly, unnecessary changes .NET that will render it incompatible with Mono. But that might actually work against them, and destroy the Evil Empire's control of .NET.

  3. Re:Just out of curiosity... by miguel · · Score: 4, Informative

    IKVM is a JIT compiler for JVM to .NET code. So there is no emulator involved, it just JITs from JVM to CIL bytecodes, and then Mono JITs the CIL bytecodes into native x86 code.

    What this shows is two things: the maturity of the IKVM JITer and the maturity of the Mono runtime as it is able to host this technologically advanced VM to run a large and complex application.

    IKVM also helps bridge the two worlds: Java and CIL. Your Java code can then be loaded and used by CIL applications (C#, VB, etc) all running together.

    Miguel.