This is probably a huge suggestion, unlikely to be accepted, but I thought I'd make it anyways. Considiering the "issues" with the new gcc-3.2 ABI and the current sun jdk, what I am about to propose might make sense. Since we already have people going to sun's website to download the binary packages, why not grab the sourcecode instead [covered under the Sun Community Source Code License]? AFAIK, the process for getting the j2-sdk source is fairly simple. As for building it, that is another question. I mean, lets face it, kaffe & friends are nowhere near to being fully compliant with the java2 API. For example, it barely has awt support, and virtually no swing support. At least this way, we might avoid some library incompatibilities with the new gcc, while still maintaining java2 compliance. If the current maintainer has no desire to explore this, then I'll look into it myself. However, I am fairly new to portage, so I doubt that I'd be the best person for the job.
The reason we have not bothered with this yet, is that: 1) You cannot redistribute the binaries you build from the sources, so we cannot include them in our stage3 tarball. Neither can people build binaries themselves and redistribute them to friends. 2) The sources available are not the same Sun use for building the final binary, it is only reference sources. Thus, we can't assume that we get the stability, performance and required field-testing that the real binary release does. 3) If you as a user download and look at the reference sources from Sun, there are potential legal problems for you if you ever want to contribute to an open-source VM in the future. 4) It is a huge undertaking. We'd spend our time much better on other tasks. However! If you, or any other external party, want to start on the project, please keep me informed, and I'll assist as best as I can. However, I want to keep my "pristine state" and not look at any of the source code, as I intend to keep my right to contribute to open source VMs. I'm closing this bug now, but please feel free to open it at any time, if you have more input/more to report. It is preferrable that we keep track of this project in bugzilla if you ever decide (or get your neighbour) to undertake it.
