[Techtalk] compilers (Java)

[Akkana]

Mary Gardiner writes:
> I don't know of any Free (as in open source) Java compilers for Linux,
> so I simply use the free (as in free to download, no licence fees) Sun
> Java compiler for Linux, available from http://java.sun.com . I think
> the gcc project is getting closer to having a Java compiler, but I
> don't
> think it's ready for production use just yet.

At the Java BOF at the SF LinuxWorld, the few people who were actively
developing in Java on Linux seemed to have the best luck with IBM's 
Jikes compiler, though most of them used both Jikes and various versions
of Sun's JDK and switched back and forth depending on what they were
working on, because apparently they're all buggy but they have different
bugs.  It was pretty sad to hear, actually.  The BOF was run by two
windows people from Sun, and I thought the fact that Sun couldn't find
even one Linux-using employee to host their LWE BOF said something.

Then there's Blackdown, http://blackdown.com, and I'm confused as to
the relationship between the Blackdown JDK and the Sun JDK.

Some open source Java efforts (none of these worked very well when I 
last tried them a year ago, but they may be better now):
  Kaffe, http://kaffe.org/
  Japhar, http://www.japhar.org/
plus the gcc effort.

Most modern linux distros (well, Redhat, Mandrake and SuSE, anyway)
offer Sun's JDK, Jikes, gcc-java, and kaffe; I don't think I've seen
Japhar on distros.

	...Akkana