classpath - News: GNU Classpath 0.90 "A La Mort Subite" released

GNU Classpath 0.90 "A La Mort Subite" released

Item posted by Mark Wielaard <mark> on Mon 06 Mar 2006 08:44:05 PM UTC.

GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create
free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools
for the java programming language.

The GNU Classpath developer snapshot releases are not directly aimed
at the end user but are meant to be integrated into larger development
platforms. For example the GCC (gcj) and Kaffe projects will use the
developer snapshots as a base for future versions. More projects based
on GNU Classpath: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/stories.html

Some highlights of changes in this release (more extensive list below):

  JTables can be rearranged and resized. Free Swing text components
  support highlighting and clipboard. Much improved styled text. Fast
  event dispatching and lower memory consumption. Better support for
  mixing lightweight and heavyweight components in AWT containers. GNU
  Crypto and Jessie cryptographic algorithms have been added providing
  ssl3/tls1 and https support. Unicode 4.0.0 support. GIOP and RMI
  stub and tie source code tools. XML validaton support for RELAX NG
  and W3C XML schemas. New file backend for util.prefs. Updated
  gnu.regexp from POSIX to util.regex syntax.

GNU Classpath also comes in a "generic" version.
classpath-0.90-generics contains a version of the core library that
uses the new 1.5 language features such as generics and
enumerations. ECJ, JamVM, IKVM and Cacao are known to support the
generics release. And you should be able to run Eclipse 3.1 with it to
develop programs that use the new 1.5 language and core library
additions. classpath-generics is a work in progress and not as
extensively tested as our regular releases. But please try it out if
you want to help us test the new 1.5 support of the core libraries.

The GNU Classpath developers site http://developer.classpath.org/
provides detailed information on how to start with helping the GNU
Classpath project and gives an overview of the core class library
packages currently provided.  For each snapshot release generated
documentation is provided through the GNU Classpath Tools gjdoc
project.  A documentation generation framework for java source
files used by the GNU project. Full documentation on the currently
implementated packages and classes can be found at:
http://developer.classpath.org/doc/

For more information about the project see also:

- GNU Classpath home page:
  http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/

- Developer information (wiki):
  http://developer.classpath.org/

- Full class documentation
  http://developer.classpath.org/doc/

- GNU Classpath hackers:
  http://planet.classpath.org/

- Autobuilder, current build status, build snapshots:
  http://builder.classpath.org/

- Application test pages (wiki)
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeAWTTestApps
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSwingTestApps
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/FreeSWTTestApps

- GNU Classpath hacking with Eclipse (wiki)
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathHackingWithEclipse

- GNU Classpath promotion banners:
  http://developer.classpath.org/mediation/ClasspathBanners

This release depends on gtk+ 2.4 for AWT support. But gtk+ 2.6 or
higher is recommended. Included, but not activated by default in this
release is a Graphics2D implementation based on the Cairo Graphics
framework (http://www.cairographics.org). Enabling this makes programs
like JFreeChart and JEdit start up on GNU Classpath based runtimes.
To enable this support install the cairo 0.5.x snapshot, configure GNU
Classpath with --enable-gtk-cairo.

One of the major focuses of the GNU Classpath project is expanding and
using the Mauve test suite for Compatibility, Completeness and
Correctness checking.  Various groups around GNU Classpath collaborate
on the free software Mauve test suite which contains around 44.000
core library tests.  Mauve has various modules for testing core class
library implementations, byte code verifiers, source to byte code and
native code compiler tests.  Mauve also contains the Wonka visual test
suite and the Jacks Compiler Killer Suite.
See for more information: http://www.sourceware.org/mauve/
This release passes 43856 out of 44429 Mauve core library tests.

Conformance reports for the included jaxp support can be found in the
doc/README.jaxp file.

GNU Classpath 0.90 can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/classpath/
or one of the ftp.gnu.org mirrors
http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

File: classpath-0.90.tar.gz
MD5sum: cf5aaaf07fe43567fa605b33165355d7
SHA1sum: 267dcd6345b90486cce17f1c73fbf33ee0d06f7c

File: classpath-0.20-generics.tar.gz (EXPERIMENTAL)
MD5sum: 55a56f0e797c21e906c0d61620ca00eb
SHA1sum: 5863cdf1c567efd8517dc8cc5445efe272b38a21

New in release 0.90 (March 6, 2006)
(See the ChangeLog file for a full list of changes.)

• Free Swing improvements: JTable columns are rearrangeable and

  resizeable with mouse. Painting and scrolling are now much
  faster. Plain text components now support highlighting and
  copy+paste to the system clipboard. Support for styled text has been
  improved, including some very basic HTML support. JFileChooser is
  now usable. Global event dispatching has been implemented. Memory
  consumption of Swing components has been reduced. Lots of general
  bugfixes. Added new system property to turn off Graphics2D use in
  Swing, even if Graphics2D is available: gnu.javax.swing.noGraphics2D

• AWT. Improved support for mixing "lightweight" and "heavyweight"

  Components in Containers. Better support for dynamically updated
  menus. Better 1.0 event model support for Scrollbars. Better class
  documentation of gtk+ awt peers.

• GNU Crypto and Jessie have been merged into GNU Classpath; this

  provides Classpath with a wide array of cryptographic algorithms
  (ciphers, message digests, etc.) and implementations of SSL version
  3 and TLS version 1. These roughly complement the public
  `java.security.' `javax.crypto,' and `javax.net.ssl' packages, and
  are service providers implementing the underlying algorithms.

• Updated HTTP and FTP URLConnection protocol handlers. HTTPS support

  out of the box.

• Unicode 4.0.0 is supported. Character now includes support for using

  ether a char or an int to identify code points.

• More correct handling of Object methods and serialization support

  for Proxy and abstract classes.

• The new folder tools includes GIOP and RMI stub and tie source code

  generators, IOR parser and both transient and persistent GIOP naming
  services.

• Added experimental support for dynamic creation of the RMI stubs

  using proxy classes. The rmic compiler is no longer required (unless
  for research and specific stubs).

• XML validaton support for RELAX NG and W3C XML schema namespace

  URIs. RELAX NG pluggable XML schema datatype library API and an
  implementation for XML Schema Datatypes
  (http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/).

• Updated StAX implementaton to be compatible with final JSWDP 2.0.

• The default back end for java.util.prefs has been changed.  The new

  default is capable of saving and restoring preferences to and from
  the file system.

• javax.imageio.plugins.bmp implementation.

• Added --enable-collections configure option which builds

  "collections.jar", a 1.1 VM compatibility jar.

• gnu.regexp updated from GNU/Posix syntax to support util.regex

  syntax including various Unicode blocks, categories and properties.

Runtime interface changes:

• A new class, VMMath, is now available which separates the native

  mathematical functions from java.lang.Math.  The previous fdlibm
  implementation now forms the reference material for this class.

• Updated VMObjectInputStream class to return Thread context class

  loader if no other class loader is found.

• Updated documentation on InstrumentationImpl in vmintegration guide.

New/Untested/Disabled Features:

  The following new features are included, but not ready for
  production yet. They are explicitly disabled and not supported. But
  if you want to help with the development of these new features we
  are interested in feedback. You will have to explicitly enable them
  to try them out (and they will most likely contain bugs). If you are
  interested in any of these then please join the mailing-list and
  follow development in CVS.

• Cairo Gtk+ Graphics2D support, enabled by giving configure

  --enable-gtk-cairo.

• QT4 AWT peers, enable by giving configure --enable-qt-peer.

The following people helped with this release:

Andrew John Hughes, Anthony Balkissoon, Anthony Green,
Artemus Harper, Audrius Meskauskas, Beat Wolf, Casey Marshall,
Chris Burdess, Christian Thalinger, Dalibor Topic, David Daney,
David Gilbert, Dimitri Fontaine, Egon Willighagen, Gary Benson,
Guilhem Lavaux, Ingo Proetel, Ito Kazumitsu, James Damour,
Jeroen Frijters, Keith Seitz, Lillian Angel, Mark Wielaard,
Michael Kay, Michael Koch, Nicolas Geoffray, Olivier Jolly,
Paul Jenner, Pedro Izecksohn, Rafael Teixeira, Raif S. Naffah,
Robert Schuster, Roman Kennke Stuart Ballard, Thomas Fitzsimmons,
Tom Tromey and Wolfgang Baer

We would also like to thank the numerous bug reporters and testers!